#WingedWordsWindsday: 2023/02/22 -- The Wisdom of Ancient Egypt

 WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled & Edited by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 2, No. 17: February 22, 2023

 

 

Celebrating the Wisdom of the Ancient Egyptians

 

“Imhotep: The World’s First Polymath”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Condensed from Cursus Honorum VIII: 9 (May/June 2008)

                According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, a polymath is a person of encyclopedic learning, and the first polymath in recorded history is Imhotep (fl. 27th century BCE), an Egyptian scientist who was greatly revered both during and after his lifetime. Born a commoner, he rose through the ranks of Egyptian society through his profound learning in many fields of study until he was appointed Grand Vizier (Prime Minister) to Pharaoh Djoser, the best-known king of Egypt’s Third Dynasty. Djoser commissioned Imhotep to build a splendid royal tomb, and what resulted was the first Egyptian pyramid – the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, which became Djoser’s final resting place. It was the largest building on Earth at that time and served as a prototype for all subsequent pyramid construction throughout Egypt’s long history.

                Imhotep was not only a capable administrator and an innovative architect; he also served as High Priest of Heliopolis, a chief city of the realm. A major aspect of his priestly occupation was the practice of medicine, which included herbal remedies as well as highly advanced surgical techniques. Imhotep recorded his vast knowledge of the surgical arts in a treatise contained on the Edwin Smith Papyrus, thus preserving his knowledge for future generations.

                Imhotep’s dedication to the healing arts led to a profound reverence for his memory among the Egyptian populace. Within a few centuries of his death, he became the first mortal to be added to the Egyptian pantheon as a demigod, and he served as the prototype for the Greek demigod Asclepius – who, like Imhotep, was regarded as a divine patron of medical science. As Asclepius, Imhotep also appeared in the Hermetic literature of late antiquity, which preserved Egyptian esoteric traditions about the origin of the cosmos and humankind’s place within it. In these treatises, Imhotep (as Asclepius) is a dialogue partner of Hermes Trismegistus (the Greek version of the Egyptian deity Thoth), a legendary alchemist, physician, and astronomer who transmitted his knowledge to his disciples for the benefit of human beings.

                Imhotep, history’s first known polymath, is a superb role model for today’s young scientists. Unwilling to lock himself up in an ivory tower or to hoard knowledge solely for himself, he freely shared his wisdom with others so that their lives could be enriched through architecture, education, medicine, science, and statecraft. Imhotep’s example also serves to remind us that no matter what field of study we may choose to specialize in, it is important to acquire a good working knowledge of several subjects so that we can wear many hats throughout our lifetime and be as useful as possible to our society. As long as we read his books and follow his example, Imhotep will live on in human memory as our history continues to unfold – even though his tomb remains undiscovered to this very day!

 

The Greek and Roman constellation Ophiuchus (above) was based on the legendary Greek physician Asclepius (fl. ca. 1250 BCE), who in turn was based on the ancient Egyptian physician Imhotep (fl. ca. 2700 BCE). Ophiuchus is depicted holding a serpent (the constellation Serpens, a symbol of healing, like the caduceus) in this illustration from Urania's Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London ca. 1825 by Sidney Hall. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

Imhotep (Asclepius) in Dialogue with Hermes Trismegistus (Thoth):  Excerpted from Part IX of a “Treatise on Initiations for Asclepius”

Translated by Edward Maitland and Anna Kingsford in The Virgin of the World (1885)

                Hermes Trismegistus: When all these things shall be accomplished, O Asclepius, then the Lord and Father, the sovereign God who rules the wide world, beholding the evil ways and actions of men, will arrest these misfortunes by the exercise of his divine will and goodness. And, in order to put an end to error and to the general corruption, he will drown the world with a deluge or consume it by fire, or destroy it by wars and epidemics, and thereafter he will restore to it its primitive beauty; so that once more it shall appear worthy of admiration and worship, and again a chorus of praise and of blessing shall celebrate him who has created and redeemed so beautiful a work. This rebirth of the world, this restoration of all good things, this holy and sacred rehabilitation of Nature will take place when the time shall come which is appointed by the divine and ever-eternal will of God, without beginning and always the same.

                Asclepius: Indeed, Trismegistus, the nature of God is will reflected; that is, absolute goodness and wisdom.

                Hermes: O Asclepius, will is the result of reflection, and to will is itself an act of willing. For he who is the fullness of all things and who possesses all that he will, wills nothing by caprice. But everything he wills is good, and he has all that he wills; all that is good he thinks and wills. Such is God, and the world is the image of his righteousness.

                Asclepius: Is the world then good, O Trismegistus?

                Hermes: Yes, the world is good, Asclepius, as I will inform thee. Even as God accords to all beings and to all orders in the world benefits of diverse kinds, such as thought, soul, and life, so likewise the world itself divides and distributes good things among mortals, changing sea-sons, the fruits of the earth, birth, increase, maturity, and other similar gifts. And thus God is above the summit of heaven, yet everywhere present and beholding all things. For beyond the heavens is a sphere without stars, transcending all corporeal things.

 

“The Wisdom of the Elders: Ptahhotep”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted & Condensed from the February 2014 Issue of the Illinois Administrative Professionals’ Newsletter

                Contemporary Western culture places a high value on youth and strength, not on age and wisdom. This emphasis is a rather recent innovation; just a few hundred years ago, reaching the silver years was considered to be the crowning achievement of human life. Elders were widely revered and consulted because of their long years of experience and valuable insight into the human condition. The reverence due to elderhood is still practiced every day by billions of people around the world. Let’s take a look at an ancient African sage to see what lessons we can learn from him about leadership and elderhood.

                Ptahhotep was an Egyptian sage who flourished around 2400 BCE. He was prime minister (grand vizier) to King Isesi, a Pharaoh of Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty. Ptahhotep was renowned for his great learning and wisdom, along with his remarkable longevity (he lived to be 110 years old!). His chief claim to fame, however, is his authorship of the oldest known book in world literature, the Maxims of Good Discourse, in which he instructed his son with wise proverbs and common-sense advice so that he could acquire good leadership qualities and achieve success and fulfillment in life.

 

Excerpt from a hieroglyphic manuscript of Ptahhotep’s book, the Maxims of Good Discourse. (Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

 

                Here are some of the lessons that Ptahhotep recorded in his book and that still speak to us today, across a gulf of 44 centuries. (The Editor has slightly modernized the spelling and grammar of this translation from a century ago.)

·         B. Here begin the proverbs of fair speech, spoken by the Hereditary Chief, the Holy Father, Beloved of God, the Eldest Son of the King, of his body, the Governor of his City, the Vizier, Ptah-Hotep, when instructing the ignorant in the knowledge of exactness in fair speaking; the glory of him that obeys, the shame of him that transgresses them. He said unto his son:

·         5. If you are a leader, as one directing the conduct of the multitude, endeavor always to be gracious, that your own conduct may be without defect. Great is Truth, appointing a straight path; never has it been overthrown since the reign of Osiris. One that oversteps the laws shall be punished. Overstepping is by the covetous man; but degradations bear off his riches. Never has evil-doing brought its venture safe to port. For he says, “I will obtain by myself for myself,” and says not, “I will obtain because I am allowed.” But the limits of justice are steadfast; it is that which a man repeats from his father.

·         16. If you are a leader, cause that the rules that you have enjoined to be carried out; and do all things as one that remembers the days coming after, when speech avails not. Be not lavish of favors; it leads to servility, producing slackness.

·         17. If you are a leader, be gracious when you hearken unto the speech of a suppliant. Let him not hesitate to deliver himself of that which he has thought to tell you; but be desirous of removing his injury. Let him speak freely, that the thing for which he has come to you may be done. If he hesitates to open his heart, it is said, “Is it because he — the judge – does the wrong that no entreaties are made to him concerning it by those to whom it happens?” But a well taught heart hearkens readily.

·         25. If you are powerful, make yourself to be honored for knowledge and for gentleness. Speak with authority, that is, not as if following injunctions, for he that is humble – when highly placed – falls into errors. Exalt not your heart, that it not be brought low. Be not silent, but beware of interruption and of answering words with heat. Put it far from you; control yourself. The wrathful heart speaks fiery words; it darts out at the man of peace that approaches, stopping his path. One that reckons accounts all the day passes not a happy moment. One that gladdens his heart all the day provides not for his house. The bowman hits the mark, as the steersman reaches land, by diversity of aim. He that obeys his heart shall command.

·         34. Let your face be bright what time you live. That which goes into the storehouse must come out therefrom; and bread is to be shared. He that is grasping in entertainment shall himself have an empty belly; he that causes strife comes himself to sorrow. Take not such a one for your companion. It is a man’s kindly acts that are remembered of him in the years after his life.

·         D. If now you attain your position, the body shall flourish, the King shall be content in all that you do, and you shall gather years of life not fewer than I have passed upon earth. I have gathered even 110 years of life, for the King has bestowed upon me favors more than upon my forefathers; this is because I wrought truth and justice for the King unto my old age. It is finished, from its beginning to its end, even as found in writing.

Editor’s Note: The complete text of Ptahhotep’s Maxims of Good Discourse can be read in Brian Brown’s classic 1923 book, The Wisdom of the Egyptians, at http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/woe/.

 

“Hermes Trismegistus and the Perennial Philosophy”

By Rob Chappell, M.A.

Adapted and Expanded from Cursus Honorum VI: 7 (February 2006) & IX: 3 (October 2008) and a Lecture in May 2013

                The origins of the Hermetic Tradition lie buried deep beneath the soil of ancient Egypt – both literally and figuratively. The legendary Egyptian alchemist, astronomer, philosopher, and physician Hermes Trismegistus (“Mercurius Termaximus” in Latin = “Thrice-Greatest Hermes or Mercury”) has been revered for millennia as the founder of the Hermetic Tradition. This world-renowned personage was later identified by Hellenistic Greek scholars with Thoth, the divine patron of wisdom and writing in the Egyptian pantheon. Renaissance scholars tried to place Hermes Trismegistus into a firm historical context, hypothesizing that he had perhaps been a contemporary of the patriarch Abraham or the prophet Moses, or (instead of being a single historical person) that he was actually a succession of Egyptian hierophants who took the name as a title, which was handed down from father to son or from teacher to disciple. However, in the opinion of this author, the fountainhead of the Hermetic Tradition, however, was most likely Imhotep – the first scientist in recorded history (see previous article).

                A collection of philosophical and alchemical treatises began to circulate under the name of Hermes Trismegistus during the first three centuries CE in Alexandria, Egypt – produced by a group of scholars and sages known as the Hermetic School. The Hermetic tractates preserved Egyptian esoteric traditions about the origin of the cosmos and humankind’s place within it. In these treatises, Hermes Trismegistus dialogues with his disciples and encourages them to transmit his knowledge to posterity for the benefit of humankind.

                After their translation into Latin by the Italian polymath, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Hermetic writings exercised a profound influ-ence upon the Renaissance intellectuals who spearheaded the Scientific Revolution – including such luminaries as Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, and Sir Isaac Newton. Such intellectual advancements were perhaps foreseen by one of the Hermetic philosophers of ancient Egypt:

 

“[Humankind] will pursue the inmost secrets of Nature even into the heights and will study the motions of the sky.  Nor is this enough; when nothing yet remains to be known than the furthest boundary of the Earth, they will seek even there the last extremities of night.” à Virgo Mundi (Hermetic Tractate, Early 1st Millennium CE)

                 The science of chemistry developed out of the “royal art” of alchemy, whose traditional founder was  Hermes Trismegistus. Alchemical researchers practiced a philosophy of life known as the Hermetic Tradition, which was based on the so-called Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of tractates that synthesized a vast amount of Egyptian, Greek, and Abrahamic material to create what would later be recognized as the alchemical worldview.

                One of the basic premises of medieval alchemy was that, by using an arcane substance known as the “Philosopher’s Stone,” ordinary metals could be transmuted into gold. Except in fairy tales, alchemists nev-er accomplished this feat, but we now know that with the proper high-tech equipment, such a marvel can be performed in the lab by adding or subtracting protons to the nucleus of an atom. The real secret of transmutation, however, had to do with the regeneration of the soul and the transformation of its “dross” (vices) into “gold” (virtues), as described in the Abrahamic Scriptures. One of the most well-known alchemists of the late Renaissance was the Rev. Dr. Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654), a distant ancestor of the Editor, who was a Lutheran theologian and a prominent member of the Rosicrucian Order – a confraternity of physicians and alchemists who gave medical treatment to the poor at no cost. Their utopian vision of a democratic, peaceful, and pluralistic future for the human race, based on an “alchemical wedding” of philsoophy, religion, and science, remains an ideal to strive for as the third millennium begins to unfold before us.

 

This drawing of an “Alchemist’s Laboratory” by Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527–1604) shows Dr. Heinrich Khun-rath (1560-1605), a German alchemist and physician, in his lab. (Image Credit: Public Domain)

 

Hermes Trismegistus According to Manetho’s Book of Sothis (3^rd Century BCE)

As Quoted by George Syncellus (d. ca. 813 CE)

                It remains now to make brief extracts concerning the dynasties of Egypt from the works of Manetho Sebennytus. In the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus he was styled high-priest of the pagan temples of Egypt, and wrote from inscriptions in the Sêriadic land, traced, he says, in sacred language and holy characters by Thoth, the first Hermes, and translated after the Flood in hieroglyphic characters. When the work had been arranged in books by Agathodaemon, son of the second Hermes and father of Tat, in the temple-shrines of Egypt, Manetho dedicated it to the above King Ptolemy II Philadelphus in his Book of Sothis, using the following words:

                Letter of Manetho of Sebennytus to Ptolemy Philadelphus. To the great King Ptolemy Philadelphus Augustus. Greeting to my lord Ptolemy from Manetho, high-priest and scribe of the sacred shrines of Egypt, born at Sebennytus and dwelling at Heliopolis. It is my duty, almighty king, to reflect upon all such matters as you may desire me to investigate. So, as you are making researches concerning the future of the universe, in obedience to your command I shall place before you the Sacred Books which I have studied, written by your forefather, Hermes Trismegistus. Farewell, I pray, my lord King.

                Such is his account of the translation of the books written by the second Hermes. Thereafter Manetho tells also of five Egyptian tribes which formed thirty dynasties.

 

“A Hymn of Grace for Knowledge”

[A Prayer Attributed to Hermes Trismegistus]

Translated by G. R. S. Mead (1863-1933) in The Hymns of Hermes (1900) [Modernized by the Editor]

                We give You grace, You highest and most excellent! For by Your grace we have received the so great Light of Your own knowledge. O holy Name, fit Name to be adored, O Name unique, by which God only must be blest through worship of our Sire, of You who deign to afford to all a Father's piety, and care, and love, and whatsoever virtue is more sweet than these, endowing us with sense, and reason, and intelligence;-with sense that we may feel You; with reason that we may track You out from appearances of things; with means of recognition that we may joy in knowing You.

                Saved by Your power divine, let us rejoice that You have shown Yourself to us in all Your fullness. Let us rejoice that You have designed to consecrate us, still entombed in bodies, to eternity.

                For this is the sole festival of praise, worthy of humankind – to know Your Majesty.

                We know You; yes, by the single sense of our intelligence, we have perceived Your Light supreme, O You true Life of life, O Fecund Womb that gives birth to every nature!

                We have known You, O You completely filled with the Conception from Yourself of Universal Nature!

                We have known You, O You eternal Constancy!

                Form the whole of this our prayer in worship of Your good; this favor only of Your goodness do we crave: that You will keep us constant in our Love-of-knowing-You, and let us never be cut off from this kind of Life.