Hermes Between Pagans and Christians The

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................... V
Table of Contents ................................................................................... VII
Abbreviations .......................................................................................... IX
HUGO LUNDHAUG AND LANCE JENOTT

Introduction: The Nag Hammadi Codices in Context ............................... 1
Part I: The Monastic Life
JON F. DECHOW
The Nag Hammadi Milieu:
An Assessment in the Light of the Origenist Controversies .................... 11
JAMES E. GOEHRING
The Material Encoding of Early Christian Division:
Nag Hammadi Codex VII and the Ascetic Milieu in Upper Egypt .......... 53
MELLISSA HARL SELLEW

Reading Jesus in the Desert:
The Gospel of Thomas Meets the Apophthegmata Patrum ..................... 81
BLOSSOM STEFANIW
Hegemony and Homecoming in the Ascetic Imagination:
Sextus, Silvanus, and Monastic Instruction in Egypt ............................ 107
Part II: Egyptian Christianity and its Literature
DYLAN M. BURNS
Magical, Coptic, Christian: The Great Angel Eleleth and the ‘Four
Luminaries’ in Egyptian Literature of the First Millennium CE ........... 141
JULIO CESAR DIAS CHAVES

From the Apocalypse of Paul to Coptic Epic Passions:
Greeting Paul and the Martyrs in Heaven ............................................. 163
VIII Table of Contents
ULLA TERVAHAUTA
The Soul Flees to Her Treasure where Her Mind Is: Scriptural Allusions in
the Authentikos Logos ........................................................................... 183
Part III: Religious Diversity in Egypt
CHRISTIAN H. BULL
Hermes between Pagans and Christians:
The Nag Hammadi Hermetica in Context ............................................. 207
RENÉ FALKENBERG
What Has Nag Hammadi to Do with Medinet Madi?
The Case of Eugnostos and Manichaeism ............................................. 261
PAULA TUTTY
Books of the Dead or Books with the Dead?
Interpreting Book Depositions in Late Antique Egypt .......................... 287
Part IV: Scribes and Manuscripts
HUGO LUNDHAUG
The Dishna Papers and the Nag Hammadi Codices:
The Remains of a Single Monastic Library? ......................................... 329
LOUIS PAINCHAUD
The Production and Destination of the Nag Hammadi Codices ............ 387
MICHAEL A. WILLIAMS AND DAVID COBLENTZ

A Reexamination of the Articulation Marks in Nag Hammadi
Codices II and XIII ............................................................................... 427
CHRISTIAN ASKELAND
Dating Early Greek and Coptic Literary Hands .................................... 457
List of Contributors ............................................................................... 491

Index of Subjects .................................................................................. 493
Abbreviations
ActIr Acta Iranica

ADAI.K Abhandlungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Kairo,
Koptische Reihe
Aeg Aegyptus
AGJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des Antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums
AJP American Journal of Philology
AnBoll Analecta Bollandiana
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
ANTF Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung
APF Archiv für Papyrusforschung
Ap. Patr. Apophthegmata Patrum
ASAE Annales du service des antiquités de l’Egypte
BAB.L Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique: Classe des lettres et des
sciences morales et politiques
BASP Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
BCNH Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi
BCNH.C Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Concordances”
BCNH.É Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Études”
BCNH.T Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi, section “Textes”
BEHE.R Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses
BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium
BG Berlin Gnostic Codex (P. Berol. 8502)
BKP Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie
BIE Bulletin de l’Institut Égyptien
BIFAO Bulletin de l'institut français d'archéologie orientale
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands Library
BO Bibliotheca Orientalis
BSac Bibliotheca sacra
BSAC Bulletin de la Société d’archéologie copte
ByzZ Byzantinische Zeitschrift
BZNW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
CBC Cahiers de la Bibliothèque copte
CBM Chester Beatty Monographs
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CCR Coptic Church Review
CCSL Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina
CH Corpus Hermeticum
CH Church History
ChrEg Chronique d’Egypte
CM Cursor Mundi
X Abbreviations
CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

ConBNT Coniectanea biblica: New Testament Series
CRAI Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres
CRINT Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum
CS Cistercian Studies
CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium
CSCO.S Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Subsidia
CSQ Cistercian Studies Quarterly
CUFr Collections des universités de France
ECCA Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity
ECF The Early Church Fathers
EPRO Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain
ETL Ephemerides theologicae lovanienses
ExpTim Expository Times
FH Fragmenta Hermetica
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testa-
ments
G1, G2, etc. First Greek Life of Pachomius, Second Greek Life of Pachomius, etc.
GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte
GCS.NF Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte:
Neue Folge
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
Hors. Reg. Regulations of Horsiesios
HTR Harvard Theological Review
Hyp Hypomnemata
IBAES Internet-Beiträge zur Ägyptologie und Sudanarchäologie
ICS Illinois Classical Studies
JAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JARCE Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JCoptS Journal of Coptic Studies
JCSCS Journal for the Canadian Society of Coptic Studies
JEA Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JJP Journal of Juristic Papyrology
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JPT International Journal of the Platonic Tradition
JRH Journal of Religious History
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LEGC Letteratura egiziana gnostica e cristiana
LTP Laval théologique et philosophique
MDAI Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts
MDAI.K Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo
MH Museum Helveticum
MRE Monographies Reine Elisabeth
Mus Le Muséon
Abbreviations XI
NHC Nag Hammadi Codex/Codices

NHMS Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies
NHS Nag Hammadi Studies
NovT Novum Testamentum
NovTSup Supplements to Novum Testamentum
NPNF2 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2
NTOA Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus
NTS New Testament Studies
NTTS New Testament Tools and Studies
OCP Orientalia christiana periodica
OECGT Oxford Early Christian Gospel Texts
OECS Oxford Early Christian Studies
OGIS Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae. Edited by Wilhelm Dittenberger
OLA Orientalia lovaniensia analecta
OLZ Orientalistische Literaturzeitung
OPIAC Institute for Antiquity and Christianity Occasional Papers
PAM Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean
PapyBrux Papyrologica Bruxellensia
PapyCol Papyrologica Coloniensia
Paral. Paralipomena
PatSor Patristica Sorbonensia
PEES.GR Publications of the Egypt Exploration Society, Graeco Roman Memoirs
PG Patrologia graeca. Edited by J.-P. Migne
PGM Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die griechischen Zauberpapyri
PLB Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava
Pr. Praecepta
PTA Papyrologische Texte und Abhandlungen
PTS Patristische Texte und Studien
QSGKAM Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums und des
Mittelalters
RB Revue biblique
RGRW Religions of the Graeco-Roman World
RHPR Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses
RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions
RSPT Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques
RSR Recherches de Science Religieuse
R&T Religion and Theology
S1, S2, etc. First Sahidic Life of Pachomius, Second Sahidic Life of Pachomius, etc.
SAA Studia Antiqua Australiensia
SAC Studies in Antiquity and Christianity
SBLSP Society of Biblical Literature Seminar Papers
SBLSymS Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series
SBo Recension of the Life of Pachomius represented by the Bo, Av, S4, S5,
S6, S7, etc. (compiled and translated by Armand Veilleux, Pachomian
Koinonia, vol. 1)
SC Sources chrétiennes
SGM Sources gnostiques et manichéennes
SH Stobaei Hermetica
SHR Studies in the History of Religions (supplements to Numen)
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
XII Abbreviations
SNTW Studies of the New Testament and Its World

SPNPT Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic Tradition
STAC Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum / Studies and Texts in
Antiquity and Christianity
StPatr Studia Patristica
TC TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism
Theoph Theophaneia
TLZ Theologische Literaturzeitung
TS Theological Studies
TUGAL Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur
TVOA Testi del Vicino Oriente antico
TynBul Tyndale Bulletin
VC Vigiliae Christianae
WGRV Writings from the Greco-Roman World
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
YCS Yale Classical Studies
ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum
ZÄSA Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde
ZDMG Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der
älteren Kirche
ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
Part III
Religious Diversity in Egypt

Hermes between Pagans and Christians:
The Nag Hammadi Hermetica in Context
CHRISTIAN H. BULL1
The scholarship on the Hermetic treatises in Nag Hammadi Codex VI has

largely focused on the authorial stage of the texts, formulating hypotheses
on what the original context of the Greek originals were, and the literary
relationship between Hermetic and “Gnostic” teachings in the second and
third centuries. The fourth century context of the actual manuscript has
received next to no attention, however, and it is this context that will be
the subject of the present contribution. Jean-Pierre Mahé, in his two-
volume critical edition of the Nag Hammadi Hermetica, considered the
Coptic translator(s) and the scribe of Codex VI to be Gnostics who held an
interest in Hermes Trismegistus.2 Since Hermetism is often referred to as a
form of pagan Gnosticism, such an interest would according to this point
of view be understandable. Furthermore, the presence of the Hermetica in
the Nag Hammadi Codices has been used to argue against the hypothesis
that the collection could have belonged to monks, since orthodox monks
1
This article has been written under the aegis of project NEWCONT (New Contexts
for Old Texts: Unorthodox Texts and Monastic Manuscript Culture in Fourth- and Fifth-
Century Egypt) at the University of Oslo, Faculty of Theology. The project is funded by
the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Community's Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement no. 283741.
2
Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Égypte (2 vols.; BCNH.T 3, 7; Québec: Les
presses de l’université Laval, 1978–1982), 1:26–8, 2:114–20. Other important editions of
the Coptic Hermetica are Martin Krause and Pahor Labib, Gnostische und hermetische
Schriften aus Codex II und Codex VI (Glückstadt: J. J. Augustin, 1971); Douglas M.
Parrott (ed.), Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2–5 and VI with Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, 1
and 4 (NHS 11; Leiden: Brill, 1979), 341–451; Alberto Camplani, Scritti ermetici in
copto: L’Ogdoade e l’Enneade; Preghiera di ringraziamento; Frammento del Discorso
Perfetto (TVOA 8; LEGC 3; Brescia: Paideia, 2000). The standard edition for the Greek
corpus and the Latin Asclepius is Arthur D. Nock and André-Jean Festugière, Hermès
Trismégiste: Corpus Hermeticum (4 vols.; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1945–1954). I will
hereafter use the standard abbreviations for the texts found in this edition: CH = Corpus
Hermeticum (vol.1–2); SH = Stobaei Hermetica (vol. 3–4); FH = Fragmenta Hermetica
(vol.4).
208 Christian H. Bull
could allegedly have had no interest in pagan writings such as those of

Trismegistus. 3 Subsequent to Mahé’s magisterial treatment of the texts,
scholarship on the Nag Hammadi Codices has seen a deconstruction of the
essensialistic term “Gnosticism”4 and a resurgence of interest in the mo-
nastic hypothesis,5 and it is consequently high time to revisit the question
of who translated and copied the Coptic Hermetica, and why. In order to
answer these questions, we shall divide our enquiry into three parts: The
first part will consider what evidence we have for Hermetism – that is,
Hermetic cult practices – in the fourth century, and in Upper Egypt in par-
ticular. The second part will explore what use Christian authors had, in the
fourth and early fifth centuries, for the literary products of such a pagan
community. Third and finally, I will consider what this can tell us about
the inclusion of Hermetica in Codex VI of the Nag Hammadi collection, as
well as the now certain inclusion of a Coptic translation of the Hermetic
treatise On the rebirth (CH XIII) in Codex Tchacos.6
Hermetism in Fourth Century Egypt
Similar to the modern term Gnosticism, deriving from the adjective

γνωστικός,7 the modern term Hermetism has a precursor in the adjective
ἑρμαϊκός. Unlike the former, however, the latter is not a heresiological
3
Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentations? The
‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Nag Hammadi Library,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi: Colloque
du Centre d’Histoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23–25 octobre 1974) (ed. Jacques É.
Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 10; Alexandr Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag
Hammadi: Einige Probleme des Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhun-
derte (Altenberge: Oros, 1995), 82–3.
4
Michael A. Williams, Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a
Dubious Category (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Karen L. King, What Is
Gnosticism? (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003).
5
Cf. Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi
Codices (STAC 97; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).
6
Jean-Pierre Mahé according to Gregor Wurst, “Preliminary Codicological Analysis
of Codex Tchacos,” in The Gospel of Judas: Together with the Letter of Peter to Philip,
James, and a Book of Allogenes from Codex Tchacos. Critical Edition (ed. Rodolphe
Kasser et al.; Washington D. C.: National Geographic, 2008), 29–30; Gregor Wurst,
“Weitere neue Fragmente aus Codex Tchacos: Zum ‘Buch des Allogenes’ und zu Corpus
Hermeticum XIII,” in Judasevangelium und Codex Tchacos: Studien zur religionsges-
chichtlichen Verortung (ed. Enno E. Popkes and Gregor Wurst; WUNT 297; Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 10–12.
7
Morton Smith, “History of the Term Gnostikos,” in Sethian Gnosticism (ed. Bentley
Layton; vol. 2 of The Rediscovery of Gnosticism: Proceedings of the International Con-
ference on Gnosticism at Yale, New Haven, Connecticut, March 28–31, 1978; SHR 41;
Leiden: Brill, 1981), 796–807.
Hermes between Pagans and Christian 209
term, but is used mostly sympathetically to designate “that which pertains

to Hermes.” It is most commonly used to refer to astrological influences
from the planet Mercury, but also to books, teachings or in one case a
magical spell derived from Hermes.8 The term is not found in the Hermeti-
ca themselves, however, which suggests that it was probably not a term of
self-designation. Rather, Hermes speaks of a Way of Immortality in his
treatises,9 designating a specific ritual course of teaching and initiation that
culminated first in a rebirth and then a visionary ascent to heaven. 10 By
Hermetism, then, we mean this ritual tradition, not some vaguely defined
set of teachings and beliefs.11 Hermetism thus implies a community who
saw themselves as adherents to the Way of Hermes, as scholars have come
to call it.12 It should be pointed out that the existence of such a community
is not attested outside of the internal evidence of the Hermetica, and re-
mains hypothetical. However, the similarities between the practices re-
ferred to in the Hermetica and those prescribed in the magical papyri as
well as Neoplatonism arguably make the existence of a Hermetic ritual
community likely.13 In the following we shall evaluate the probability that
such communities were still in existence in fourth century Egypt.
A good point of departure is Iamblichus, who testifies to Hermetic prac-
tices at the turn of the fourth century. Writing under the pseudonym of the
Egyptian high-priest Abammon,14 Iamblichus defended Egyptian “theurgy”
8
Astrological: e.g., Alexander, In Aristotelis metaphysica commentaria 704.12; Anu-
bion, Fr. 2.203.21, Ps.-Clement, Rec. 9.27.6–7. Teachings: Iamblichus, Ab. Resp. 8.4–6;
Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum 4.117.21. Books: Iamblichus, Ab. Resp.
10.7; Cyril of Alexandria, C. Jul. 1.41.10. Spell: PGM XIII.138.
9
Cf. Jean-Pierre Mahé, “La voie d’immortalité à la lumière des Hermetica de Nag
Hammadi et de découvertes plus récentes,” VC 45 (1991): 347–75; Christian H. Bull,
“The Tradition of Hermes: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wis-
dom,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Bergen, 2014), 133ff.
10
Cf. Carsten Colpe and Jens Holzhausen, Das Corpus Hermeticum deutsch (2 vols.;
Stuttgart: Frommann Holzboog, 1997), 1:159; Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Altered States of
Knowledge: The Attainment of Gnosis in the Hermetica,” JPT 2 (2008): 128–63; and
Bull, “The Tradition of Hermes,” 237ff. Mahé sees the ascent to the Ogdoad and Ennead
to be a different version of the rite of rebirth, passim, e.g., Hermès, 1:46–7.
11
In this I follow Kevin van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Proph-
et of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 17–22; cf. also Bull, “Tradition of
Hermes,” 21–23.
12
E.g., Anna van den Kerchove, La voie d’Hermès: Pratiques rituelles et traités
hermétiques (NHMS 77; Leiden: Brill, 2012).
13
I have argued this at length in my dissertation: Bull, “Tradition of Hermes.”
14
Although most scholars accept Proclus’ assertion that Iamblichus hides behind the
pseudonym Abammon, there are still some who claim that Abammon must have been an
actual Egyptian priest, due to his knowledge of Egyptian rituals and mythology. See the
most recent discussion of the pseudonym in Henri Dominique Saffrey and Alain-Philippe
Segonds, Porphyre: Lettre à Anébon l’égyptien (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012), XIX–
against Porphyry, who had written a critique in his Letter to Anebo. In the
latter work, which is today only extant in fragments, Porphyry must have
expressed doubt regarding the alleged high antiquity of the books of Her-
mes, as well as the authenticity of their Egyptian provenance, for Iambli-
chus is defensive in this regard, asserting: “Those documents, after all,
which circulate under the name of Hermes contain Hermetic doctrines
(ἑρμαϊκὰς δόξας), even if they often employ the terminology of the philos-
ophers; for they were translated from the Egyptian tongue by men not un-
versed in philosophy.”15 According to Iamblichus, then, the books of Her-
mes contained ancient Egyptian wisdom that had been translated more re-
cently by Egyptian priests conversant with Greek philosophy. Iamblichus
also accepts the astrological literature ascribed to Hermes as authentic, but
claims that they represent the lower, cosmic levels of the system, to be
completed by the teachings dealing with the higher, noetic realms. Fur-
thermore, Iamblichus defends the practices of traditional Egyptian cult as
preparatory and conducive to the soul’s ascent, since they are sensible
symbols of noetic realities. 16 According to Iamblichus’ testimony, then,
Egyptian priests were involved in the writing of Hermetica, and Hermetic
practices were still kept in Egypt in his time. Iamblichus must be consid-
ered well-informed, for he demonstrates knowledge of the religious prac-
tices of Egyptian priests and provides a Hermetic protogony that is likely
related to the Poimandres. 17 Thus, at the turn of the fourth century, this
Syrian philosopher defended a set of practices and ideas that he perceived
to be still current in Egypt. Polymnia Athanassiadi has gone so far as to
suggest that Iamblichus might himself have been initiated into a Hermetic
community in Egypt. 18 This hypothesis is attractive, as it would explain
Iamblichus’ familiarity with Hermetic teachings and practices, but cannot
be proven; another explanation would be that he had simply derived his
knowledge from the books of Hermes. At any rate, we can use Iamblichus’
testimony as a point of departure, and consider the degree to which Her-

XXXVIII; idem, Jamblique: Réponse à Porphyre (De mysteriis) (Paris: Les Belles Let-
tres, 2013), LXI–LXXI.
15
Iamblichus, Myst. 8.4: τὰ μὲν γὰρ φερόμενα ὡς Ἑρμοῦ ἑρμαϊκὰς περιέχει δόξας, εἰ
καὶ τῇ τῶν φιλοσόφων γλώττῃ πολλάκις χρῆται· μεταγέγραπται γὰρ ἀπὸ τῆς αἰγυπτίας
γλώττης ὑπ’ ἀνδρῶν φιλοσοφίας οὐκ ἀπείρως ἐχόντων. Ed. Saffrey and Segonds,
Jamblique, 196; Trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon and Jackson P. Hershbell,
Iamblichus: On the Mysteries (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 315.
16
Cf. Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus (Univer-
sity Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 127ff.
17
Shaw, Theurgy, 127–88, 231–42; Iamblichus, Myst. 8.2–3; cf. Bull, “Tradition of
Hermes,” 95–102.
18
Polymnia Athanassiadi, La lutte pour l’orthodoxie dans le platonisme tardif: De
Numénius à Damascius (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2006), 162–66.
metic practices could still be found in Egypt in the fourth century, namely
cult practices directed towards earthly images, astrological computation,
and rites and contemplative practices that lead to the soul’s ascent.
Confirmation that these elements were all important in Hermetism can
be found in the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth (NHC VI,6). This
text, which describes the ascent of Hermes and his son to the eighth and
ninth noetic spheres, claims to be translated from a hieroglyphic stele
placed in the temple of Hermes in Thebes (61.18–22). Here it was sup-
posed to be erected during a specific astrological juncture (62.16–19), and
guarded from trespassers by divine statues and an imprecatory oath (62.4–
10, 22–28, 63.15–32). Even though this is certainly fiction, it still testifies
to the continued importance of temples, statues, and astrological computa-
tion in Hermetism, as well as visionary ascent.19
Egyptian Temples and their Statues

That the cult of statues with its sacrifices played some role in Hermetism is
indicated especially by the Perfect Discourse, known as the Asclepius in
its Latin translation, which gives an apology and rationale to the practice.20
Here, Hermes mentions temples and statues of Isis, Osiris, Hermes, and
Asclepius, the latter two being ancestors of the homonymous protagonists
of the treatise. The earthly gods are demons called down from heaven into
statues by means of sacred rites, in order that they may heal and predict the
future, but also harm those who anger them (Asclepius 23–24 & 37–38).
Hermes predicts that a time will come when godlessness and foreign rule
make the gods leave their statues. This will leave Egypt, “the temple of the
world,” bereft of divine presence, which in turn will cause the breakdown
of cosmic and societal order, with the result that the good demiurge purges
the world with floods and conflagrations, in order to remake it as it was in
the beginning (Asclepius 24–26=NHC VI 70.3–74.11). The care of the
earthly gods in the Egyptian temples was thus vital to ensure the continued
19
Cf. Christian H. Bull, “The Notion of Mysteries in the Formation of Hermetic Tra-
dition,” in Mystery and Secrecy in the Nag Hammadi Collection and Other Ancient Lit-
erature: Ideas and Practices (ed. Christian H. Bull, Liv I. Lied, and John D. Turner;
NHMS 76; Leiden: Brill, 2012), 422.
20
Cf. Van den Kerchove, La voie d’Hermès, 185–274; eadem, “Les hermétistes et les
conceptions traditionelles des sacrifices,” in L’Oiseau et le poisson: Cohabitations reli-
gieuses dans les mondes grec et romain (ed. Jean-Daniel Dubois and Nicole Belayche;
Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2011), 61–80, who argues that the practic-
es have been discontinued, and only their memory remains. Against this, cf. Christian H.
Bull, “No End to Sacrifice in Hermetism,” in Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice: Dis-
engaging Ritual in Ancient India, Greece and Beyond (ed. Peter Jackson and Anna-Pya
Sjödin; Sheffield: Equinox, 2016), 143–66. Cf. also CH XVII, which is a brief apology
for statues of the gods.
life of the cosmos, according to Hermes. I have elsewhere suggested that

this prediction likely dates to the early third century, since it seems to
make reference to a law issued in year 199 by the prefect Saturninus
against oracular processions, which were vital to Egyptian religion.21 The
prediction would later be interpreted by Lactantius and Augustine as pres-
aging the demise of paganism and triumph of Christianity. 22 Roelof van
den Broek points out that the philosopher Olympius likely has the predic-
tion of Hermes in mind, when during the defense of the Serapeum in 391
he says that the the statues consist of perishable matter, and that when they
are destroyed their indwelling powers fly up to heaven.23 Also the fourth-
century philosopher Antonius, who gathered disciples around him in a
temple in Canopus, predicted that the temples would become tombs and a
gloom would fall over the world, reminiscent of the Perfect Discourse.24
The extent to which traditional Egyptian cult practices were still being
performed in the fourth and fifth centuries has been the subject of vigorous
debate.25 David Frankfurter has argued for the widespread continuation of
popular practices even though the temple complexes had been steadily de-
21
Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 341–42.
22
Lactantius, Div. Inst. 7.18.3–4; Augustine, Civ. Dei 8.24. Robin Lane Fox, in his
review of Fowden’s The Egyptian Hermes (JRS 80 [1990]: 238), has crucially overlooked
the former passage and consequently questions the dating of the prophecy to before Lac-
tantius, citing only Div. Inst. 7.15.10 and 16.4, which may be from the Sibylline Oracles.
23
Sozomen, HE 7.15; Roelof van den Broek, “The Hermetic Apocalypse and other
Greek Predictions of the End of Religion,” in From Poimandres to Jacob Böhme: Gnosis,
Hermetism and the Christian Tradition (ed. Roelof van den Broek and Cis van Heertum;
Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan, 2000), 97–113 at 102–3.
24
Eunapius, Vit. Soph. 6.11.10; Van den Broek, “Hermetic Apocalypse,” 108–12.
25
Jean Maspero, “Horapollon et la fin du paganism égyptien,” BIFAO 11 (1914):
184ff.; Brinley R. Rees, “Popular Religion in Graeco-Roman Egypt: II. The Transition to
Christianity,” JEA 36 (1950): 86–100; Roger Rémondon, “L’Égypte et la suprême résis-
tance au Christianisme (ve–viie siècles),” BIFAO 51 (1952): 63–78; Friedrich Zucker,
“Priester und Tempel in Ägypten in den Zeiten nach der decianischen Christenverfol-
gung,” in Akten des VIII. internationalen Kongresses für Papyrologie, Wien 1955 (Wien:
Rudolf M. Rohrer, 1956), 167–74; Johannes Geffcken, The Last Days of Greco-Roman
Paganism (trans. Sabine MacCormack; Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1978), 124, 170,
174; Françoise Thelamon, Païens et chrétiens au IVe siècle: L’apport de l’‘Histoire ec-
clésiastique’ de Rufin d’Aquilée (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1981), 157–243; Eva
Wipszycka, “La christianisation de l’Égypte aux IVe –VIe siècles: Aspects sociaux et
ethniques,” Aeg 68 (1988): 117–65; Lázló Kakosy, “Das Ende des Heidentums in Ägyp-
ten,” in Graeco-Coptica: Griechen und Kopten im byzantinischen Ägypten (ed. Peter
Nagel; Halle: Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1984), 61–76; Roger S.
Bagnall, “Combat ou vide: christianisme et paganisme dans l’Égypte romaine tardive,”
Ktema 13 (1988): 285–96; idem, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993), 261ff.; Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in
Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE (trans. David Lorton; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004),
276–81, 339–41.
clining since the third century, while his detractors have accused him of
reading too literally hagiographic reports of iconoclastic activities, such as
those of Shenoute, which had become a trope by the fourth century.26 The
question lies outside the scope of the present contribution, although it is
clear that some pagan activities continued into the fourth century and be-
yond, to a varying degree in different places:27 The temple of Isis at Philae
was only shut down by Justinian in 535–537, and cultic practices possibly
continued even after that date.28 At any rate, while the Asclepius presup-
poses the continued existence of the cult of the earthly gods, it is clear that
the teachings of Hermes are presented as supplementing this cult, not be-
ing coterminous with it. Since humans are said to be binary beings, con-
sisting of an immortal, noetic essence and a mortal, material body, they
also have a double set of duties: to contemplate and worship heaven, and
to cultivate the world (Asclepius 9). Given the decidedly worldly benefits
of the earthly gods, it seems likely that their cult is considered to belong to
the worldly duties of mankind. The individual members of the Hermetic
communities would therefore likely be involved in temple worship, either
as priests or lay worshippers, while the practices of the Hermetic groups
would be geared towards the cultivation of their immortal inner selves.29
The gradual demise of the temples need therefore not necessarily have en-
tailed the disbanding of the Hermetic communities, though it would likely
give rise to the sort of despair testified to in the prediction of Hermes in
the Perfect Discourse.
26
David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1998); idem, “Onomastic Statistics and the Christianiza-
tion of Egypt: A Response to Depauw and Clarysse,” VC 68 (2014): 284–9; Roger S.
Bagnall, “Models and Evidence in the Study of Religion in Late Roman Egypt,” in From
Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiqui-
ty (ed. Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, and Ulrich Gotter; RGRW 163; Leiden: Brill,
2008), 23–41; Mark Depauw and Willy Clarysse, “How Christian was Fourth Century
Egypt? Onomastic Perspectives on Conversion,” VC 67 (2013): 407–35; idem, “Christian
Onomastics: A Response to Frankfurter,” VC 69 (2015): 327–29; Mark Smith, “Aspects
of the Preservation and Transmission of Indigenous Religious Traditions in Akhmim and
its Environs during the Graeco-Roman Period,” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyp-
tian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest (ed. Arno Egberts, Brian P.
Muhs, and Jacques van der Vliet; PLB 31; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 245–47; idem, Following
Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2017), 421–537; Lorenzo Medini, “Chronique d’une mort annoncée? Le
crépuscule des temples et des païens d’Égypte,” Topoi 20 (2015): 239–80.
27
Medini, “Chronique,” 258–60.
28
Procopius, De bellis 1.19.36; Jitse H. F. Dijkstra, “A Cult of Isis at Philae after Jus-
tinian? Reconsidering ‘P. Cair. Masp.’ I 67004,” ZPE 146 (2004): 137–154. For a critical
view, cf. Smith, Following Osiris, 460–62.
29
Asclepius 5, 7, 9, 11.
Thoth and Hermopolis

We must take into special consideration the temples of Thoth, who was
universally considered to correspond to the Egyptian Hermes by both pa-
gans and Christians. For example, Cicero identified one of five Hermeses
as the Egyptian Theuth (Nat. d. 3.56), who Plato refers to in two dialogues
as either a god or a divine human (Phaedr. 274c–e; Phileb. 18b), an ambi-
guity that remained even in the later Hermetic texts (Asclepius 37; SH
XXIII). This Egyptian Hermes was given the epithet Trismegistus at least
as early as the first century CE.30 The epithet demonstrably derives from
Ptolemaic-era Egyptian developments, where Thoth was hailed first as the
twice, then thrice greatest Lord of Hermopolis, which already in the sec-
ond century BCE was translated into Greek as the “greatest and greatest
god, great Hermes,” 31 and in one recorded case the Egyptian title was
simply transliterated with Greek characters as the “great, great, great lord
of Shmun” (ΩΩΩ νοβ Ζμουν).32 Although Thoth received temples and cult
throughout Egypt, he was in particular the tutelary god of two cities called
Hermopolis, a lesser one in the Delta and a greater one in the Thebaïd –
the Egyptian Shmun. The cult of the sacred bird of Thoth, the ibis, was
popular throughout Egypt, and local chapters kept in touch with the cult
center through delegations that brought mummified ibises to be buried in
the extensive subterranean cemeteries for sacred animals there. 33 This
practice, however, seems to have disappeared in the first or second century
of our era.34 The temple complex of Thoth lay in the north quarter of the
city, and there were no archaeological deposits between the New Kingdom
level and around 400 CE, which suggested to the excavators that the tem-
ple was active until this time.35
The veneration of Thoth was around three millennia old in the fourth
century, when we still find it practiced despite the decline of Egyptian
30
Cf. Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 29–30.
31
Theodore C. Skeat and Eric G. Turner, “An Oracle of Hermes Trismegistus at
Saqqâra,” JEA 54 (1968): 199–208. Cf. John D. Ray, The Archive of Hor (London: Egypt
Exploration Society, 1976), for Demotic attestations of the epithet from the same archive.
32
Victor Girgis, “A New Strategos of the Hermopolite Nome,” MDAI.K 20 (1965):
121.
33
Dieter Kessler and Abd el Halim Nur el-Din, “Tuna al-Gebel: Millions of Ibises
and Other Animals,” in Divine Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt (ed. Salima
Ikram; Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 120–63. The personal reminis-
cences of the excavator of these animal cemeteries can be found in Sami Gabra, Chez les
derniers adorateurs du Trismégiste: La Nécropole d’Hermopolis Magna, Touna el Gebel
(Souvenir d’un Archéologue) (Cairo: al-Hayʼah al-Miṣrīyah al-ʻĀmmah, 1971), 156ff.
34
Kessler and Nur el-Din, “Tuna al-Gebel,” 149.
35
Alan J. Spencer, Excavations at El-Ashmunein II: The Temple Area (London: Brit-
ish Museum Publications, 1989), 76–77.
temples. We know this from the papyri of Theophanes, a well-travelled

entrepreneur from Hermopolis, who had many letters in his care.36 Two of
these are from Anatolius, who identifies himself as the Chief-Prophet of
Hermes Trismegistus. One letter is addressed to the “all-wise” Ambrosius,
who Anatolius calls “champion of the wisdom of the Greeks.”37 The letter
is only a short greeting, but demonstrates that this Egyptian priest was
friendly with a Greek philosopher, or at least someone inclined towards
philosophical literature. In another letter, to a certain Sarapion, Anatolius
excuses himself that he is unable to make a visit due to his duties related to
the festivals and processions of Thoth.38 As a high-priest, Anatolius would
walk in the processions, probably carrying the most sacred insignia of his
rank.39 There are still archaeological remains of the “stone-paved proces-
sional way of thrice great Hermes” leading up to the temple where the
statue of Thoth was kept.40 These letters thus assure us that the traditional
cult of Thoth was still active in the early fourth century, and that the Egyp-
tian high-priest identified his god with Hermes Trismegistus. 41 We can
however not be sure if either Hermetic astrology or rites of rebirth and
ascent were practiced by Anatolius. At least we can infer that he was likely
interested in philosophy from his correspondence with Ambrosius, and
given the reputation of Hermes Trismegistus it would not be too far-
fetched to assume that Ambrosius wished to gain access to the hieratic
wisdom and ritual competence of the high-priest. Similarly, the Alexandri-
36
Editions in Brinley R. Rees, Papyri from Hermopolis: And other Documents of the
Byzantine Period (PEES.GR 42; London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1964) and Ales-
sandro Moscadi, “Le lettere dell ‘archivio di Teofane,’” Aeg 50 (1970): 88–154. Cf.
Brinley R. Rees, “Theophanes of Hermopolis Magna,” BJRL 51 (1968): 164–83; Hélène
Cadell, “Les archives de Theophanes d’Hermoupolis: Documents pour l’histoire,” in
Egitto e storia antica dall’ellenismo all’eta araba: Bilancio di un confronto: Atti del
colloquio internazionale, Bologna, 31 agusto – 2 settembre 1987 (ed. Lucia Criscuolo
and Giovanni Geraci; Bologna: CLUEB, 1989), 315–23; John Matthews, The Journey of
Theophanes: Travel, Business, and Daily Life in the Roman East (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 2006), 12–40.
37
P.Herm.Rees 3 (Moscadi 8); cf. Matthews, Journey of Theophanes, 22.
38
P.Herm.Rees 2 (Moscadi 7); cf. Matthews, Journey of Theophanes, 21; Medini,
“Chronique,” 359–60..
39
Apuleius, Met. 11.11–12; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.4.35–36.
40
P.Flor. I 50.97: τοῦ λιθοστρώτου δρόμου Ἑρμοῦ θεοῦ τ̣ρισ̣μεγάλου. Cf. Lorenzo
Medini, “La topographie religieuse d’Hermopolis à l’époque gréco-romaine,” Camenulae
7 (2011): 1–14; idem, “Hermopolis gréco-romaine ou les limites de l’archéologie d’une
ville disparue,” n.p. [1 May 2017]. Online: http://anthropologiedelart.org/ramage/?page_
id=452.
41
Other letters refer to Theophanes as a (ἀγαπητὸς ἀδελφός) which has been taken to
indicate either that the letters reflect a brotherhood of Hermetists, or that Theophanes or
some of his family and friends were Christian. For an overview, cf. Malcolm Choat, Be-
lief and Cult in Fourth-Century Papyri (SAA 1; Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 90ff.
an philosopher Demetrius Cythras in the year 359 admitted to having of-

fered sacrifice and asked for oracular responses from the Egyptian god
Bes, who had a shrine in Abydos in Upper Egypt.42
Another indication that Hermetism, or at least its memory, was still
prevalent in Hermopolis is the so-called Strasbourg Cosmogony, a hexa-
metric poem on a papyrus most likely from fourth-century Hermopolis.43
The fragmentary poem describes how Hermes emanates from his father,
Zeus, to create the universe. Hermes first ends the strife of the elements
and unites them in friendship, reminiscent of Empedocles, and then he
makes the sphere of heaven which he divides into seven zones. Hermes
then goes to earth with his son, Logos, and looks for a temperate place in
Egypt to found his city, alluding to Hermopolis. There are some points of
similarity here with the Poimandres, where the demiurgic Nous and Logos
– possibly alluded to in the persons of Hermes and his son Logos in the
poem – first separate the elements and then put the heavenly spheres in
motion (CH I, 5–11). The brevity of the fragment does not however allow
us to say much about Hermetic practices. However, as we shall see, there
are contemporary priestly writings from elsewhere in Upper Egypt that
testify to such practices, which increases the likelihood that Anatolius, as
the high-priest of Hermes Trismegistus, would also have been a practition-
er of Hermetic rites.
Panopolis: Ammon Scholasticus and Zosimus

Pagan temples were still active in fourth-century Panopolis. 44 The late
third and fourth century archive of Ammon Scholasticus contains letters
from an elite family possessing the high priesthood of the first rank tem-
ples of Panopolis’s tutelary god Min. 45 The members of this family was
42
Ammianus Marcellinus 19.12.12. Cf. also the horoscope written on the wall of the
temple of Sethos I in Abydos, dated to 352: “By Bes! May I not be wiped out” (νη τον
βησαν ου μη εξαλειψω), cf. Otto Neugebauer and Henry B. van Hoesen, Greek Horo-
scopes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987), 69.
43
Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 175. Greek text and English translation in Denys L.
Page, Select Papyri III: Poetry (LCL 360; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1962), 544–51. The papyrus was dated to the early fourth century by early scholars, but
to its second half by Daria Gigli Piccardi, La cosmogonia di Strasburgo (Firenze: Uni-
versità degli studi di Firenze, 1990), 13, who also tentatively suggests Andronicus of
Hermopolis as its author (pp. 60ff.).
44
Smith, Following Osiris, 429. Cf. Karolien Geens, “Panopolis, a Nome Capital in
Egypt in the Roman and Byzantine Period (ca. AD 200-600)” (PhD-diss., KU Leuven
2007), 440–41, 452–54.
45
Cf. Geens, “Panopolis,” 231; Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 174; Bagnall, Egypt in
Late Antiquity, 272–73; Gerald M. Browne, “Harpocration Panegyrista,” ICS 2 (1977):
184–96; William H. Willis, “The Letter of Ammon of Panopolis to his Mother,” in Actes
also well versed in Hellenic philosophy and literature. 46 The letters are
fragmentary and largely devoted to mundane affairs but there are scattered
references to issues relevant to our purposes. First, in a letter to his mother,
Ammon refers to the cycles (κύκλοι) of the stars as determining fortune;
now the cycles are negative, he informs his mother, but soon they will turn
for the better.47 Furthermore Ammon says that he wanted to come home
earlier, but that fortune had decreed otherwise. This seems to imply that
Ammon had consulted his horoscope on whether he should go home or
not, and if the state of affairs will improve. Such horoscopes are known
from great quantities of papyri, spread fairly evenly over the first five cen-
turies CE,48 and several astrological papyri and ostraca have been found in
the vicinity of Panopolis.49 Several zodiacs from the area are also known,
including one in the temple of Min.50 We cannot, however, be sure if Am-
mon cast his own horoscope or consulted a professional astrologer. Am-
mon was probably a priest himself,51 who might therefore have benefitted
from a priestly education, and Egyptian priests were by the Roman period
recognized as expert astrologers. In another letter, a petition to the catholi-
cus regarding a dispute over some slaves, Ammon diplomatically states
that when the catholicus was in charge, “the providence of the gods to-

e
du XV Congrès International de Papyrologie 2: Papyrus inédits (ed. Jean Bingen,
Georges Nachtergael, and Eric G. Turner; PapyBrux 17; Brussels: Fondation
égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1979), 98–115; William H. Willis and Klaus Maresch,
eds., The Archive of Ammon Scholasticus of Panopolis (P. Ammon) 1: The Legacy of
Harpocration (PapyCol 26/1; Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1997); Peter van Minnen,
“The Letter (and other papers) of Ammon: Panopolis in the fourth Century A.D.,” in
Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab
Conquest (ed. Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs, and Jacques van der Vliet; PLB 31; Leiden:
Brill, 2002), 177–99; Frank Feder, “Ammon und seine Brüder: Eine ägyptische Familie
aus Panopolis (Achmim) im 4.Jh. zwischen ägyptisch-hellenistischer Kultur und Chris-
tentum,” in Genealogie: Realität und Fiktion von Identität (ed. Martin Fitzenreiter;
IBAES 5; London: Golden House Publications, 2005), 103–7. On the culture of late an-
tique Panopolis, cf. Alan Cameron, “The empress and the poet: paganism and politics at
the court of Theodosius II,” YCS 27 (1982): 217–21. Curiously, in his lengthy survey of
the survival of pagan religion in Akhmim Smith (Following Osiris, 423–47) does not
once mention the priestly family of Ammon. To the contrary, he claims that the last ref-
erence to any chief priest of an indigenous cult in all of Egypt is from the year 180 CE
(ibid., 518).
46
Geens, “Panopolis,” 379.
47
Willis and Maresch, Archive of Ammon, 24. The passage in question is lacunose,
but the general sense is clear.
48
Otto Neugebauer and Henry B. van Hoesen, Greek Horoscopes (Philadelphia:
American Philosophical Society, 1959), 162.
49
Smith, “Indigenous Religious Traditions,” 242–43.
50
Smith, Following Osiris, 425.
51
Geens, “Panopolis,” 233.
gether with Agathos Daimon was guiding the land of the Upper Egyp-
tians.”52 Agathos Daimon is a well-known figure from the Hermetica, alt-
hough the term may be used as an epithet for several Egyptian gods, e.g.
Sarapis. However, the father of Ammon, the former high-priest, was called
Petearbeschinis, 53 a theophoric name of Harbeschinis, who must be the
same as Harnebeschênis, the Horus of Letopolis (Ḥr-nb-Sḫm), who is
called “king of philosophy” in SH XXVI, 9. Admittedly this does not
amount to evidence of the presence of Hermetism, but it confirms that by
the mid-fourth century there were still high-priests of Min in Panopolis
who had an affinity for divine figures associated with the Hermetica and
astrological predictions. It should also be noted that those responsible for
the transmission of religious knowledge in the House of Life in the temple
of Min were priests of Thoth, who also had a temple in the city, and that
Panopolis also had ibis and baboon cemeteries which might earlier have
been connected to those in Hermopolis Magna by the sending of sacred
delegations. 54 Futhermore, a votive inscription was set up in the city
around the middle of the third century to “the great god, Hermes Trisme-
gistos.”55 The papyri of Ammon that are dated to 348 CE are also the last
attestations of the office of “High Priest of Alexandria and All of Egypt,”
an equestrian office in charge of the administration of the Egyptian tem-
ples. The Ammon papyri are finally interesting because they give us some
background to another famous Panopolitan, the alchemist Zosimus.
Zosimus of Panopolis was probably writing around the turn of the
fourth century, and was thus roughly contemporary with Ammon and his
family.56 Recently Shannon Grimes has argued, on the basis of those writ-
52
P.Ammon 12.2–3 and 13.2–3 (Willis and Maresch, Archive of Ammon, 114, trans.
136): τῆς θεῶν προνοίας ἡγουμένης σὺν Ἀγαθῶι Δαίμονι τῆς χώρας τῆς τῶν ἄνω
Αἰγυπτιων. The text is attested in two drafts, each lacunose. I have translated πρόνοια as
“providence” instead of “goodwill,” suggested by the editors.
53
Πετεαρβεσχίνις: P.Ammon 5.1 & 6.2; Willis and Maresch, Archive of Ammon, 70,
74, and cf. 19 n. 1.
54
Smith, “Indigenous Religious Traditions,” 242; Maria T. Derchain-Urtel, “Thot à
Akhmim,” in Hommages à François Daumas (ed. Antoine Guillaumont; Montpelier:
Université de Montpelier, 1986), 173–80.
55
OGIS 716: θεὸν μέγαν Ἑρμῆν | Τρισμέγιστο[ν] | Γάϊος Ἰούλιος Σεουῆρο[ς] |
λεγ(εῶνος) βʹ Τρ(αϊανῆς) Ἰσχυρᾶς | Γορδιανῆς εὐχ[ὴν] | ἀνέθηκα.
56
Marcellin Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (3 vols.; Paris: G.
Steinheil, 1887–1888), vol. 2; André-Jean Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismé-
giste (4 vols.; Paris: Lecoffre, 1949–1954), 1:260–82; Jack Lindsay, The Origins of Al-
chemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London: F. Muller, 1970), 323–57; Howard M. Jackson,
Zosimus of Panopolis on the Letter Omega (Missoula: Scholars press, 1978), 11; Michèle
Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques (Les alchimistes grecs 4.1; Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 1995), xi; eadem, “Alchemy, Hermetism and Gnosticism at Panopolis
c. 300 A.D.: The Evidence of Zosimus,” in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian
ings of Zosimus that are only preserved in Syriac, that Zosimus must have
been connected to the House of Life, the Egyptian temple scriptorium, and
since he refers to other alchemists as prophets, he might be one himself.57
In that case he might have been personally acquainted with some of the
priests in Ammon’s family, namely his father Petearbeschinis, his half-
brother Horion I, or the latter’s son, Horion II. However, it is not certain
that Zosimus was a priest. Grimes cites multiple passages where Zosimus
demonstrates intimate knowledge of priests and of what goes on within the
temple, but other passages seem to be ambivalent to priests and the statues
of the gods. For example, when discussing books of Hermes kept hidden in
temples, Zosimus indicates that he has knowledge of these books, but at
the same time he seems to distance himself from the priests who keep them
hidden:
Many other people want to give their names to the formulas, but they are censured by the
priests, by those who possess the books. The priests have a copy to read in the sanctuar-
ies of the temples; everyone knows that the books are by Hermes and other Egyptian
authors. Some people say that the black tincture and the excellent (?) white tincture of
copper are to be found there.58

Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest (ed. Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs,
and Jacques van der Vliet; PLB 31; Leiden: Brill, 2002), 165–75; Shannon Grimes,
“Zosimus of Panopolis: Alchemy, Nature, and Religion in Late Antiquity,” (Ph.D. diss.,
Syracuse University, 2006), 25.
57
Grimes, “Zosimus,” 37; with no reference to the crucial article by Alan H. Gardi-
ner, “The House of Life,” JEA 24 (1938): 157–79.
58
Zosimus, On the Letter Waw (Syriac) 6.19; Marcellin Berthelot and Rubens Duval,
La chimie au Moyen âge, vol. II: l’alchimie syriaque (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1893),
226: “Beaucoup d’autres veulent donner leur nom aux recettes; personne ne les en empê-
che. Mais ils sont blâmés par les prêtres, par ceux qui possèdent les livres. Les prêtres en
font lire une copie dans les sanctuaires des temples. Tout le monde sait que ces livres
sont d’Hermès et d’autres auteurs égyptiens. Quelques-uns disent qu’on y trouve la tein-
ture noire et la teinture blanche excellente (? Loupariston) du cuivre.” Unfortunately,
neither the Syriac text nor a full translation of this important text have yet been pub-
lished. An edition and translation is however in preparation by Matteo Martelli, who has
also provided the Syriac text and French translation of part of the passage above, in
Matteo Martelli, “Zosime gréco-syriaque, Plutarque et la teinture noire des statues égyp-
tiennes,” forthcoming in Religion in the Roman Empire. I thank the author for sharing a
draft of this article with me. Cf. also Mertens, Zosime, lxx–lxxvii. Alberto Camplani,
“Procedimenti magico-alchemici e discorso filosofico ermetico,” in Il tardoantico alle
soglie del duemila (ed. Giuliana Lanata; Pisa: Edizione ETS, 2000), 73–98 at 75–76,
provides the Syriac text and Italian translation of some further pages. Matteo Martelli,
“L’alchimie en syriaque et l’oeuvre de Zosime,” in Sciences en syriaque (ed. Émilie
Villey; Études syriaques 11; Paris: Geuthner, 2014), 191–214 at 199–211, suggests that
the fifteenth century codex contains an abridged version of a Syriac translation from the
end of the fifth- or beginning of the sixth century.
Why would Zosimus say that “some people” say that the black and white
tinctures are found in the hidden books, if he belonged to the group that
has access to the books and could have found it out for himself? Zosimus
elsewhere unequivocally states that the books of Hermes contained infor-
mation about tinctures, though he criticizes him for being secretive about
them, since he hid his books within temples.59 Zosimus is critical of the
secrecy of the prophets, but he is also polemical about certain people who
vainly want to gain fame by adding their name to the priestly teachings.
These fame-seekers are also called prophets in another passage, where
Zosimus informs us that he has given up seeking out their books because
they are guarded jealously with oaths of secrecy.60 This jealousy is identi-
fied as a destructive passion, leading to further wickedness, and in another
passage, preserved in Greek, Zosimus seems to attribute jealousy to the
demons that receive the sacrifices in the temples:
So then the overseers, who were expelled by the men who were then great, took counsel
together to use the natural tinctures against us, so that they should not be expelled by
humans, but rather be served and invoked and sustained by sacrifices, and so they did.
They hid all the natural and self-acting tinctures, not only because they envied them (the
humans), but also because they had thought for their own life, so that they should not be
whipped and expelled, and not be punished with famine from not receiving sacrifices.
This is what they did: They hid the natural tincture and introduced their own unnatu-
ral one, and they gave it to their own priests, and if the commoners neglected the sacri-
fices they even prevented success with the unnatural tinctures.61 All those who mastered
the so-called doctrines of the <demons of the> age produced water, and their sacrifices
became abundant because of custom, law, and fear.
And no longer did they fulfill even the lies they had promised. But when there then
occurred a revolution in the stars that govern the area of the country,62 and the area was
carried into war, and the human race left that area, and their temples became deserted,
and their sacrifices were neglected, they seduced the humans that remained with their lies
59
Zosimus, Final Quittance 4–5.
60
Zosimus, On the Letter Waw 6.4; Berthelot and Duval, La chimie, 223–4: “Cette re-
cette capitale était la principale pour les anciens, et elle était tenue cachée. Non
seulement le secret était obligatoire, mais il était aussi prescrit par tous les serments qui
en sanctionnaient le mystère. Ainsi que nous l’avons dit, les divers symboles des prêtres
ont été expliqués par les anciens maîtres et les différents prophètes, dont le nom est dev-
enu célèbre, et qui ont prévalu avec toute la puissance de la science. Quant à moi, j’ai vu
combien on éprouve de difficulté à obtenir ces désignations de la part des gens envieux,
en raison de l’espoir de vanité fondé sur elles et de la jouissance qu’ils en retiraient. …
j’ai détourné ma face de tous ces écrits.” Grimes, “Zosimus,” 37, takes this passage to
support Zosimus’ alleged priestly status.
61
Reading ἀφυσικῶν for ἀφύσικον.
62
Berthelot, Collection, 2:235 (tr.) omits this astrological sentence in his translation,
with no explanatory comment. Festugère, Révélation, 279 n. 5, admits that the meaning is
obscure. Cf. Heliodorus, Comm. in Paulum Alexandrinum (Emilie Boer, Heliodori, ut
dicitur, in Paulum Alexandrinum commentarium [Leipzig: Teubner, 1962], 130): λέγε ὅτι
τοσαῦτα ἔτη ἐκεῖνο τὸ ζῴδιον εἰς ἀποκατάστασιν ἔχει ἐν τῷ κλίματι ἐκείνῳ·
and many portents, as through dreams, to observe the sacrifices. And once they again
made false and unnatural promises, all the hedonistic, wretched, and unlearned humans
were delighted. This is also what they want to do to you, woman, through their false
prophet. They seduce you, those <demons> who in each place hunger not only for sacri-
fice, but also for your soul.63
Who are these deceivers who receive sacrifice? They are likely demons,
since in the following passage Zosimus contrasts God who is everywhere
to the demons who are in low places. 64 It should also be noted that the
whole account of the deceivers follows directly after a quote that Hermes
is said to have inscribed on stelae in ancient times: “These (tinctures) act
naturally, but they are begrudged by those surrounding the earth: but when
someone who has been initiated expels them, he will find what he seeks.”65
It would make sense to call the demons “those who surround the earth”
since they are normally placed in the sublunary atmosphere in the Platonic
63
Zosimus, The Final Quittance 7 (my trans.): οἱ οὖν ἔφοροι ἐκδιωκόμενοι ποτε παρὰ
τῶν τότε μεγάλων ἀνθρώπων, συνεβουλεύσαντο ἀντὶ ἡμῶν τῶν φυσικῶν
ἀντιποιῆσασθαι, ἵνα μὴ διώκωνται παρὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλὰ λιτανεύωνται καὶ
παρακαλῶνται, οἰκονομῶντα <δὲ> διὰ θυσιῶν, ὅ καὶ πεποίηκασιν· ἔκρυψαν <γὰρ> πάντα
τὰ φυσικὰ καὶ αὐτόματα, οὐ μόνον φθονοῦντες αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τῆς ἑαυτῶν ζωῆς
φροντίζοντες, ἵνα μή μαστιζῶνται ἐκδιωκόμενοι καὶ λιμῷ τιμωρῶνται, θυσίας μὴ
λαμβάνοντες. ἐποίησαν οὕτως· ἔκρυψαν τὴν φυσικὴν καὶ εἰσηγήσαντο τὴν ἑαυτῶν
ἀφύσικον, καὶ ἐξέδωκαν αὐτὰ τοῖς ἑαυτῶν ἱερεῦσι, εἴ τε δημόται ἠμέλουν τῶν θυσιῶν,
ἐκώλυον καὶ αὐτοὶ τὴν ἀφύσικον φιλοτιμίαν· ὅσοι δὲ κατεκράτησαν, τὴν νομιζομένην
δόξαν <δαιμόνων> τοῦ αἰῶνος ὑδρογεννήσαντο καὶ ἐπληθύνθησαν ἔθει καὶ νόμῳ καὶ
φόβῳ αἱ θυσίαι αὐτῶν. <ἀλλ’> οὐκέτι οὐδὲ τὰς ψευδεῖς αὐτῶν ἐπαγγελίας ἀπεπλήρουν·
ἀλλ’ ὅτε ἐγένετο ἄρα ἀποκατάστασις τῶν κλημάτων, καὶ διεφέρετο κλίμα πολέμῳ καὶ
ἐλείπετο ἐκ τοῦ κλίματος ἐκείνου τὸ γένος τῶν ἀνθρώπων καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ αὐτῶν ἠρημοῦντο,
καὶ αἱ θυσίαι αὐτῶν ἠμελοῦντο· τοὺς περιλειπομένους ἀνθρώπους ἐκολάκευον ὡς δι’
ὀνειράτων διὰ τὸ ψεῦδος αὐτῶν <καὶ> διὰ πολλῶν συμβόλων, τῶν [τῶν] θυσιῶν
ἀντέχεσθαι, αὐτὰς δὲ πάλιν παρεχόντων τὰς ψευδεῖς καὶ ἀφυσίκας ἐπαγγελίας· καὶ
ἥδοντο πάντες οἱ φιλήδονοι ἄθλιοι καὶ ἀμαθεῖς ἄνθρωποις· ὥστε <τοῦτο> καί σοι
θέλουσιν ποιῆσαι, ὦ γύναι, διὰ τοῦ ψευδοπροφήτου αὐτῶν· κολακεύουσιν σε, τὰ κατὰ
τόπον <δαιμόνια>, πεινῶντα, οὐ μόνον θυσίας, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν σὴν ψυχήν. Ed. Festugière,
Révélation, 366–67. An alternate translation can be found in Lindsay, Origins of Alche-
my, 338; French trans. Festugière, La révélation, 1:279–80. Grimes, “Zosimus,” 53–4,
quotes the passage but does not seem to realize that it creates problems for her thesis of
Zosimus’ priestly occupation.
64
Zosimus, The Final Quittance 8: θεὸς ἥξει πρὸς σὲ ὁ πανταχοῦ ὢν, καὶ οὐκ ἐν τόπῳ
ἐλαχίστῳ ὡς τὰ δαιμόνια· Note that Festugère added two references to demons in brack-
ets in the passage above.
65
Zosimus, The Final Quittance 6: καὶ τὰ εἴδη τῶν χρωμάτων ἐμήνυσεν [sc. Ἑρμῆς]·
αὗται φυσικῶς ἐνεργοῦσιν· φθονοῦνται δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν περ<ι>γείων <δαιμόνων>· ἐπὰν δέ
τις μυηθεὶς ἐκδιώκει αὐτοὺς, τεύξεται τοῦ ζητουμένου. Berthelot, Collection, 2:243 (Gr.)
suggests <ὑ>περγείων and believes it necessary to postulate a lacuna after the word,
where Festugière supplies <δαιμόνων> (La révélation, 1:366 ln. 16).
demonology of the imperial age.66 It thus seems that Egyptian priests are
identified with the alchemists who use “unnatural”, timely tinctures, which
depend on the whim of the demons to be efficient.67 However, it is clear
that Zosimus also presents himself as someone who has access to the au-
thentic art of alchemy, hidden in the secret recesses of Egyptian temples.
Associating the recipients of sacrifices with deceitful demons is hardly
the kind of attitude one would expect from someone deriving their liveli-
hood from the temples. Like Hermes in the Asclepius, Zosimus identifies
demons as the recipients of sacrifice in the temples, but these demons
teach their worshippers about “unnatural tinctures” and hide the legitimate
natural ones.68 There are three phases in the history laid out by Zosimus:
first, in ancient times, some “great men” repelled the demons. Then, in
response, the demons took control of the natural tinctures, and substituted
them with their own unnatural tinctures to make humans worship them
with sacrifices in the temples. Finally, a war laid the area waste, put a stop
to sacrifices, and left the temples deserted. In the Hermetica, those who are
enlightened by God are able to repel the demons that affect the body, just
like the “great men of old” of Zosimus.69 However, these demons cannot
be the same ones as the demons who are summoned in order to inhabit the
statues in the Asclepius, for the latter are beneficent demons. 70 It seems
that Zosimus willfully subverts the narrative of the Asclepius, where the
discovery of how to make earthly gods is a great achievement of the ances-
tors of Hermes and his disciples (§ 37), and instead turns it into a ruse on
the part of the demons. The third phase of Zosimus’ narrative has the
clearest parallel to the Asclepius: Hermes predicts that foreigners will in-
vade Egypt, that Egyptians will become extinct, and that the temples will
become deserted, all of which is described as something that has already
happened by Zosimus. His demons resemble the “wicked angels” of the
Asclepius, who will remain on earth after the gods have left Egypt in order
to teach humans unnatural things (ϩ︤ⲙ︥ⲡⲁ[ⲣ]ⲁⲫⲩⲥⲓⲥ), a close match to Zosi-
mus’ unnatural tinctures (ἀφυσίκα).71 The most likely explanation seems to
66
Cf. Frederick E. Brenk, “In Light of the Moon: Demonology in the Early Imperial
Period,” ANRW 16.3 (1986): 2068–145.
67
This is also the conclusion of Matteo Martelli, “Alchemy, Medicine and Religion:
Zosimus of Panopolis and the Egyptian Priests,” forthcoming in an anthology on ancient
alchemy edited by Cristina Viano. I am grateful to the author for sharing a draft of this
article with me.
68
Cf. Mertens, Zosime, 62 n. 9; Daniel Stolzenberg, “Unpropitious Tinctures. Alche-
my, Astrology & Gnosis according to Zosimos of Panopolis.” Archives Internationales
d’Histoire des Sciences 49 (1999.): 3-31, on natural and timely or propitious tinctures.
69
Cf. CH I, 22–23; IX, 3; X, 21; XII, 4; XIII, 7–9; XVI, 15–16.
70
Cf. Asclepius 5, 24, 37–38.
71
Asclepius, NHC VI 73.5–12: ⲛ̣̄ⲁ̣[ⲅⲅⲉ]ⲗ̣ⲟ̣[ⲥ ⲇⲉ ⲙ̄]ⲡⲟⲛ̣ⲏⲣⲟⲥ [ⲥ]ⲉⲛⲁϣⲱϫ︤ⲡ︥ ⲟ̣[ⲩ]ⲁ̣ⲉⲧⲟⲩ
be that Zosimus had read the prediction of Hermes, and perceived it to

have been fulfilled by the crisis of the third century, when indeed the
Egyptian temples were in decline, the country was briefly under the con-
trol of the Palmyrene empire, and the Thebaid was invaded by Blemmyes
from the south.72
Further complicating matters, Zosimus states in another Syriac passage
that most people believe the statues are animated, but only a few people
know that they are in fact man-made, since this was taught in secret by the
ancients to the priests. 73 Does this imply that Zosimus himself was a
priest? And how can this view be harmonized with the idea that demons
receive the sacrifices, if they are not believed to inhabit the statues? Fur-
ther research needs to be undertaken on the Syriac texts in order to answer
these questions. We might at present only conclude provisionally that it is
unlikely that Zosimus was an Egyptian prophet, given his extensive criti-
cism of these, but he had obviously had extensive dealings with priests and
prophets, with mixed results. One possibility is that Zosimus intends his
critique only for certain prophets, such as his rival Nilus,74 who is probably
the “false prophet” trying to seduce Theosebeia, but in that case one would
have expected him to distinguish clearer between legitimate and illegiti-
mate prophets. Another possibility is that Zosimus was a priest of a lower

ⲛ̄ⲛ̄ⲣⲱⲙⲉ ⲉⲩϣⲟⲟⲡ ⲛⲙ̣̄ⲙⲁⲩ ⲉⲩⲥⲱⲕ ϩⲏⲧ̣ⲟⲩ ⲁϩⲟⲩⲛ ⲁⲙⲡⲉⲧϩⲟⲟⲩ ϩ︤ⲛ︥ⲟⲩⲧⲟⲗⲙⲏⲣⲓⲁ· ⲁⲩⲱ ⲁϩⲟⲩⲛ
ⲁⲛⲙ︤ⲛ︦ⲧ︥ⲁⲧⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ϩⲉⲛⲡⲟⲗⲉⲙⲟⲥ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ϩⲉⲛⲧⲱⲣ︤ⲡ︥ ⲉⲩϯ ⲥⲃⲱ ⲛⲁⲩ ⲉϩ︤ⲙ︥ⲡⲁ[ⲣ]ⲁⲫⲩⲥⲓⲥ· = Asclepius
25: soli nocentes angeli remanebunt qui, humanitate commixti, ad omnia audaciae mala
miseros manu iniecta conpellent: in bella, in rapinas, in fraudes et in omnia quae sunt
animarum naturae contraria. These wicked angels might have been influenced by those
of the Book of Watchers, cf. Marc Philonenko, “Un allusion de l’Asclepius au livre
d’Hénoch,” in Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults (ed. Jacob Neusner;
4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 2:161–63. Zosimus quotes a passage of Hermes that deals
with fallen angels teaching mankind the works of nature or alchemy, preserved in the
Syriac corpus and the Greek Ecloga chronographica of George Syncellus; cf. Berthelot,
La chimie, 238–9 and William Adler and Paul Tuffin, The Chronography of George Syn-
kellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 18.
72
Cf. Lindsay, Origins of Alchemy, 339–40.
73
Zosimus, On the Letter Waw (Syriac) 6.31 (Berthelot and Duval, La chimie, 228–
29): “Je pense que les anciens, par suite de leur esprit de jalousie, n’écrivirent pas ces
choses; mais ils les firent connaître en secret aux prêtres seuls. Les hommes étaient saisis
de crainte à la vue des images; ils pensaient qu’elles étaient animées et qu’elles tenaient
leurs couleurs de la nature vivante; à tel point qu’ils n’osaient pas les regarder en face,
par crainte de la nature vivante des membres et de la figure de l’objet façonné. Peu nom-
breux étaient ceux qui pensaient qu’elles étaient faites par la compositions et l’artifice
des hommes; attendu que cela ne se disait qu’en secret et en cachette.” The Syriac text
and English translation of this passage is forthcoming in Martelli, “Alchemy.”
74
Zosimus, Traitement du corps de la magnesia 8 (Berthelot, Collection, 2:191);
Berthelot and Duval, La chimie, 228–29.
rank or a craftsman connected to a temple, who did not have access to the
books of the prophets and eventually became resentful of their reticence. It
could also be that he was a former priest, who had been deprived of his
office due to the general decline of the temples, and that he felt some re-
sentment from this, or that he at some point converted to Christianity.
It is plausible and even probable that Zosimus was part of a Hermetic
ritual community.75 He matches exactly the profile of the type of person
we would suspect were members, associating with Egyptian priests, being
a practitioner of the “occult science” of alchemy, and having a strong in-
terest in Greek philosophy as well as Jewish and Christian apocryphal lit-
erature.76 He frequently cites Hermes Trismegistus approvingly as an au-
thority, but most telling is the fact that he encourages his protégée The-
osebeia, a priestess who he refers to as “sister” and “queen”, in these
words: “When you recognize yourself, that you have become perfect, and
<have attained> the natural tinctures, spit on matter, and by hastening to-
wards Poimenandres and immersing yourself in the mixing-bowl, return to
your race.”77 This is undoubtedly a reference to the Poimandres (CH I; cf.
XIII, 15) and to The Mixing Bowl (CH IV), and in the latter text the son of
Hermes is indeed encouraged to immerse himself in the mixing bowl filled
with nous.78 The Final Quittance and The Mixing-Bowl are the only two
Greek texts that feature this striking image of immersing oneself in a mix-
ing-bowl, and both texts specify that in order to do so it is necessary to
estrange oneself from matter. Although less certain, it is also possible that
the exhortation to “return to your race” echoes the treatise On the Rebirth,
where Hermes tells his son about a “race” that cannot be taught but only
reminded by God, to which the son, Tat, replies that he is born of the “pa-
ternal race.”79 Supporting the supposition that Zosimus might allude to On
the Rebirth is that both texts makes a withdrawal from matter a prerequi-
site for attaining to this “race”, and furthermore Zosimus has earlier in the
text discussed twelve “fates of death,” connected with the passions that are
to be resisted, which may be related to the twelve avengers of matter and
darkness in On the Rebirth (CH XIII, 7–12). Certainly, the number twelve
75
Cf. Kyle A. Fraser, “Baptised in Gnôsis: The Spiritual Alchemy of Zosimos of
Panopolis,” Dionysius 15 (2007): 33–54.
76
Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 120–26.
77
Zosimus, The Final Quittance 8: ὅταν δὲ ἐπιγνῷς σαυτὴν [ms. ἐπιγνοῦσα αὐτὴν]
τελειωθεῖσαν, τότε καὶ <ἐπιτύχουσα> τῶν φυσικῶν τῆς ὕλης κατάπτυσον [ms.
κατάπτησον], καὶ καταδραμοῦσα ἐπὶ τὸν Ποιμένανδρα καὶ βαπτισθεῖσα τῷ κρατῆρι,
ἀνάδραμε ἐπὶ τὸ γένος τὸ σόν. Festugière, Révélation, 368, justifies his emendations on
the basis of a parallel passage from Olympiodorus.
78
Cf. Camplani, “Procedimenti,” 83.
79
CH XIII, 2–3: Τοῦτο τὸ γένος, ὦ τέκνον, οὐ διδάσκεται, ἀλλ’ ὅταν θέλῃ, ὑπὸ τοῦ
θεοῦ ἀναμιμνήσκεται . . . ἀλλότριος υἱὸς πέφυκα τοῦ πατρικοῦ γένους.
is a number generally associated with astral fatality, but there are more
convergences that point in the direction of a common tradition. In both
texts the quelling of the twelve is a prerequisite to summon divinity, and
when the divinity arrives one should make a sacrifice of another kind: a
“rational sacrifice” in On the Rebirth, and sacrifices that are “not useful,
nourishing or soothing to them (i.e. the demons), but rather unnourishing
and destructive to them,” in the Final Quittance. 80 Zosimus goes on to
state that these sacrifices are the ones that Membres instructed to King
Solomon, and that the latter also wrote of them himself. This would seem
to go against a Hermetic provenance, but the name Membres is likely de-
rived from Iambres, the name that certain Jewish and Christian apocrypha
gave to one of the two Egyptian magicians that competed with Moses be-
fore Pharaoh. It is thus likely that Membres is considered to be an Egyp-
tian sage instructing king Solomon. Similarly, in a Syriac text of Zosimus
he writes that the Egyptians possess a book entitled On the Seven Heavens
that is often attributed to Solomon, but actually was brought to “our
priests,” i.e. to Egyptian priests, who then seem to have transmitted this to
Solomon.81
It is currently not possible to reach any firm conclusions on the relation-
ship between Zosimus and Hermetism, but it should be clear that Zosimus
is a highly interesting figure for the type of person who would read Her-
metica as well as Christian and Jewish apocryphal literature around the
turn of the fourth century, and he was in all likelihood familiar with the
type of rituals we see in the Hermetica.
Hermetism in Thebes
We have seen that the arch-prophet of Hermes Trismegistus, Anatolius,
corresponded with the Greek philosopher Ambrosius, possibly because the
latter was interested in the ritual competence of the Egyptian priest of
Thoth, the supposed source of Pythagoras and Plato, an interest that
Iamblichus also testifies to. If we cannot be sure if the priests of Hermopo-
lis practiced Hermetic rituals, then we at least know that similar rites were
practiced by Egyptian priests a little further up the Nile, past Nag Ham-
madi, in Thebes. The so-called Thebes-cache or Thebes library is a group
of papyri from the early third to the early fourth century, brought to di-
verse European institutions by the nineteenth century entrepreneur Gio-
80
CH XIII, 18: δι’ ἐμοῦ δέξαι τὸ πᾶν λόγῳ, λογικὴν θυσίαν; 19: δέξαι ἀπὸ πάντων
λογικὴν θυσίαν; 21: σοί, γενάρχα τῆς γενεσιουργίας, Τὰτ θεῷ πέμπω λογικὰς θυσίας;
Zosimus, The Final Quittance 8: πρόσφερε θυσίας τοῖς <δαίμοσιν>, μὴ τὰς προσφύρους,
μὴ τὰς θρεπτικὰς αὐτῶν, καὶ προσηνεῖς, ἀλλὰ τὰς ἀποτρεπτικὰς αὐτῶν, καὶ ἀναιρετικὰς.
81
Berthelot, La chimie, 264–65.
vanni Anastasi.82 Several papyrus rolls and codices have with varying de-
grees of certainty been said to belong to this library.83 A far too often over-
looked fact, in studies of ancient magic, is that these texts contain numer-
ous spells in Demotic, Old Coptic, and even some Hieratic glosses, and
therefore must have been written and read by people with a priestly educa-
tion from the House of Life, since this was the only place these languages
were taught in the Roman period, as far as we know.84 The centrality of
this institution is indicated in the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth,
where the Coptic expression for hieroglyphs is “letters of the scribe of the
House of Life.”85
Scholars have tended to see Late Antique Thebes as having degenerated
into a collection of villages, as Strabo described it (17.1.46), due to several
failed uprisings in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. However, David
Klotz has recently demonstrated that temple building and cultic activity
continued into the Roman Period, and at least some cultic processions con-
tinued into the fourth century.86 In this collection we find a wide range of
ritual procedures, from erotic spells and spells to gain wealth to methods
of acquiring divine power, visions and even ascent. Hermes-Thoth is fre-
quently invoked, both as a divine power and as the originator of the proce-
82
Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 168–72; Richard Gordon, “The Religious Anthropology
of Late-Antique ‘High’ Magical Practice,” in The Individual in the Religions of the An-
cient Mediterranean (ed. Jörg Rüpke; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 166; Mi-
chela Zago, Tebe magica e alchemica: L’idea di biblioteca nell’Egitto romano: la
Collezione Anastasi (Padova: Libreriauniversitaria.it, 2010); Smith, Following Osiris,
512–18.
83
Cf. Korshi Dosoo, “A History of the Theban Magical Library,” BASP 53 (2016):
251–74. The number of manuscripts included in the cache varies, cf. for example Zago,
Tebe, 59–78, who includes far more manuscripts than Dosoo.
84
Sven P. Vleeming, “Some Notes on Demotic Scribal Training in the Ptolemaic Pe-
riod,” in Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Papyrologists, Copenhagen,
23-29 August, 1992 (ed. Adam Bülow-Jacobsen; Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum
Press, 1994), 185–7; W. John Tait, “Some Notes on Demotic Scribal Training in the
Roman Period,” ibidem, 188–92; Gordon, “Religious Anthropology,” 167–69; Jacco
Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites: The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and
Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100–300 CE) (RGRW 153; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 22,
203–84; Frankfurter, Religion, 198–237, 249–51.
85
NHC VI 61,20: ϩⲉⲛⲥϩⲁⲓ̈ ⲛ̄̄ⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲣⲁⲛ︦ϣ︦; 61,30: ϩ︦ⲛ︦ⲥϩⲉⲉⲓ ⲛ̄ⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲣⲁⲉⲓϣ; 62,15: ϩⲛ̄ⲥϩⲁⲉ︦ⲓ
ⲛ̄ⲥⲁϩ ⲡⲣⲁⲉⲓϣ. Cf. Mahé, Hermès, 1:124–25; Enzo Lucchesi, “A propos du mot Sphransh”
JEA 61 (1975): 254-56, also discusses the Bohairic ⲥⲫⲣⲁⲛϣ̄ used to translate the Septua-
gint’s ἐξηγητής (Gen 41:8 & 24).
86
David Klotz, Caesar in the City of Amun: Egyptian Temple Construction and The-
ology in Roman Thebes (MRE 15; Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 380, 398–401 (Buchis cor-
onation until 340), 388 (reduced Amun-cult in 4th c.), 397–98 (continued Sokar festival).
Smith, Following Osiris, 518–26, is skeptical that Egyptain religion continued past the
early third century.
dures. In the “Great Paris Magical Papyrus” (P. Bibliothèque nationale

Supplément grec. 574; PGM IV), the Mithras Liturgy –falsely so-called–
has recently been identified as an early Hermetic rite of immortalization
and ascent by Hans Dieter Betz. 87 Though this has not been universally
accepted, there are certainly strong similarities between the spell and the
Hermetic rites of rebirth and ascent. 88 Another spell in the same manu-
script is meant to produce a trance in a boy or adult, in which Osiris-Re-
Amun enters this medium, and it uses the secret names of this god that
Hermes Trismegistus had allegedly written in hieroglyphs in Heliopolis.89
Some of the spells in the codex are written in Old Coptic, which is indica-
tive of a priestly context.90 In another manuscript in the group, one of the
versions of the famous Leiden Kosmopoiia (PGM XIII) is labeled as a
“Hermetic” spell (ἑρμαϊκὸς), and the cosmogony therein has structural
similarities to the Poimandres (CH I) and the Hermetic cosmogony report-
ed by Iamblichus (Myst. 8.4). 91 Whereas Hermetic treatises such as the
Poimandres, On the rebirth, and the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth
present idealized narratives of visions and rebirth, some spells of the
Thebes-cache contain recipes for rites meant to actually obtain similar ex-
periences. Even though far from all the names, mythemes, or practices de-
scribed in the Thebes-cache have any parallel in the philosophical Hermet-
ica, the substantial overlap makes the continued existence of a Hermetic
community in early fourth century Thebes not only possible but even
probable. Thebes is furthermore mentioned in the Discourse on the Eighth
and the Ninth, where Hermes instructs his son to inscribe the treatise on a
87
Hans Dieter Betz, The “Mithras Liturgy”: Text, Translation, and Commentary
(STAC 18; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 35–38; Camplani, “Procedimenti,” 86.
88
Cf. Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 423–35.
89
PGM IV.883–887: δεῦρό μοι διὰ τοῦ δεῖνα ἀνθρώπου ἢ παιδίου καὶ ἐξήγησόν μοι
μετὰ ἀκριβείας, ἐπεί σου λέγω τὰ ὀνόματα, ἃ ἔγραψεν ἐν Ἡλιουπόλει ὁ τρισμέγιστος
Ἑρμῆς ἱερογλυφικοῖς γράμμασι·
90
Cf. however Edward O. D. Love, Code-Switching with the Gods: The Bilingual
(Old Coptic-Greek) Spells of PGM IV and their Linguistic, Religious, and Socio-Cultural
Context in Late Roman Egypt (ZÄS Beihefte 4; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). Love follows
Smith, Following Osiris, chap. 7, in arguing that there were no Egyptian priests and thus
no one competent in Egyptian scripts in the early fourth century, and that therefore the
last owner of the Thebes-cache was merely a Greek-literate descendant of priests who
kept the Demotic manuscripts as now-incomprehensible heirlooms. Love ignores the
testimony of the archives of Theophanes and Ammonius, as well as that of Zosimus.
Moreover, he mentions the Buchis-stela of 340 from Armant, a mere 10 miles south of
Thebes, but neglects to notice that it is engraved with Hieroglyphs, thus testifying that
there were people in the Thebes-area still competent in Egyptian scripts. Cf. Jean-Claude
Grenier, “La stèle funéraire du dernier taureau Bouchis (Caire JE 31901 = Stèle Bu-
cheum 20). Ermant - 4 novembre 340,” BIFAO 83 (1983): 197–208.
91
Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 102.
hieroglyphic stele in his temple in Diospolis, probably referring to Di-

ospolis Magna, one of the names for Thebes (NHC VI 61.19). Further-
more, an imprecatory oath and guardian statues should be added to the
stele, to guard it against the uninitiated, and it should be erected at a spe-
cific astrological conjunction. This passage demonstrates the continued
confluence of noetic ascent, Egyptian temples, and magico-astrological
thinking in the Hermetica, a confluence which could have been dismissed
as exoticizing fiction were it not for the Thebes-cache, which indicates that
Egyptian priests were still involved in such activities.92
Furthermore, in Papyrus Mimaut (P.Louvre 2391; PGM III) we find the
Hermetic Prayer of Thanksgiving, also found in the Latin Asclepius and
Nag Hammadi Codex VI, completing a spell to gain a ritual union with the
sun-god Helios (PGM III.494–611). This manuscript has been grouped
with the Thebes-cache by some scholars, although there is no conclusive
evidence that it belonged to the same collection. Indeed, similar ritual
handbooks also existed elsewhere in Egypt. 93 Papyrus Mimaut contains
similar spells as those in the Thebes-cache, some of which are in Old Cop-
tic, and was likely written by someone versed in priestly lore.94 The manu-
script thus testifies that Hermetic hymns could be used in the third or
fourth century in ritual practices to invoke the sun-god and be “illuminated
with knowledge.”95
There is, then, good reason to suppose the continued existence of a
Hermetic ritual system of gaining divine power and ascending to the heav-
enly spheres in fourth century Egypt, and that the priests of the dwindling
temples were instrumental in this tradition. In the final years of the fourth
century, Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that divine knowledge had spread
from Egypt to the rest of the world: “There, for the first time, long before
other men, they discovered the cradles, so to speak, of the various reli-
gions, and now carefully guard the first beginnings of worship, stored up
92
Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 299–323.
93
Dosoo, “History,” 263–64. The Trismegistos database lists the provenance as
Thebes.
94
Christine Harrauer, Meliouchos: Studien zur Entwicklung religiöser Vorstellungen
in griechischen synkretistischen Zaubertexten (Vienna: Verlag der österreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987), 12–14 and passim. Cf. now Edward O. D. Love,
“The ‘PGM III’ Archive: Two Papyri, Two Scribes, Two Scripts, and Two Languages,”
ZPE 202 (2017): 175–88, who demonstrates that PGM III consists of two separate manu-
scripts, first partially written by one scribe, and later filled out by a second scribe, who
also supplied the Old Coptic spells.
95
PGM III.584–585: ἵνα με νῦν ἐρατῶν πρὸς σὲ τὴν γνῶσιν ἐλλυ[χνιάσ]ῃς. Dosoo,
“History,” 262, dates the ms to the third century, whereas Harrauer, Meliouchos, 12,
dates it to after 300 CE. Cf. Mahé, Hermès, 1:141–46; Camplani, “Procedimenti,” 86–87.
in secret writings.”96 The present tense indicates that Ammianus believes

the Egyptian priests still guard their secret writings. Elsewhere, he men-
tions an “ancient authority” who invented the hieroglyphs, and this author-
ity is no doubt Hermes Trismegistus, who is listed before Apollonius of
Tyana and Plotinus as experts on the guardian spirit. 97 Describing the
transfer of an obelisk from Thebes to Rome in 357, he refers to Rome as
the “temple of the entire world,” an expression used for Egypt in the As-
clepius.98 Just around this time, as we have seen, both Christians like Au-
gustine and pagans like Antonius believed that Hermes’ predicted demise
of the Egyptian religion had already come to pass.
After the fourth century any trace of Hermetism as a living ritual tradi-
tion seems to disappear, although certain pagan intellectuals from Alexan-
dria might have had some sort of allegiance to Hermes, or at least an inter-
est in his teachings.99 Towards the end of the century, after the destruction
of the Serapeum, we hear of the two pagan teachers of Socrates Scholasti-
kus, Helladius and Ammonius, who leave Alexandria for Constantinople.
These two were reportedly priests respectively of Sarapis and “The Ape”
(πίθηκος), most likely Thoth, but we know little else of them.100 Other con-
temporaries, such as Theon, father of Hypatia, Paul of Alexandria, and the
anonymous astrologer of 379, were at least interested in astrological Her-
metica. Alan Cameron has argued that Theon, Hypatia, and Synesius were
likely involved in Iamblichean theurgy steeped in the Chaldaean Oracles
and the Hermetica,101 and their contemporaries Olympiodorus and Stepha-
nus were interested in alchemical Hermetica.102 In the late fifth century the
brothers Asclepiades and Heraiscus both wrote on Egyptian theology and
rituals, and the latter “dwelt in shrines and places of initiation, as he re-
96
Ammianus Marcellinus 22.16.20: lbi primum homines longe ante alios ad varia
religionum incunabula (ut dicitur) pervenerunt et initia prima sacrorum caute tuentur
condita scriptis arcanis. Ed. and trans. John C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus (3 vols.;
LCL 300, 315, 331; London: W. Heinemann, 1952–1963), 2:306–7.
97
Ammianus Marcellinus 17.4.8 (on hieroglyphs): initialis sapientiae vetus insignivit
auctoritas; 21.14.5 (on guardian spirit): Hermesque Termaximus, et Tyaneus Apollonius
atque Plotinus. Cf. R. L. Rike, Apex Omnium: Religion in the Res Gestae of Ammianus
Marcellinus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 20, 33–34.
98
Ammianus Marcellinus 17.4.13: ablatum uno templo miraculum Romae sacraret, id
est in templo mundi totius; Ascl. 24: terra nostra mundi totius est templum. Cf. Rike,
Apex, 98–99 nn. 60 and 65.
99
Cf. Ilsetraut Hadot, Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism and the Harmoniza-
tion of Aristotle and Plato (SPNPT 18; Leiden: Brill, 2015), 5 ff.
100
William C. McDermott, The Ape in Antiquity (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
press, 1938), 37.
101
Alan Cameron, Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1993), 50–58, 290–97.
102
Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 178.
vived the ancestral rites not just in Egypt, but also abroad wherever any
such customs might have survived. He put all his efforts in the collection
of information on the secret worship of the gods.”103 Certainly it is at least
possible that such a person could have been an inheritor of the Hermetic
tradition, especially since it is implied that he had undergone a rebirth ren-
dering him divine.104
The Christian Reception of Hermes

in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries
Egyptian Christians could in the fourth century, as we have seen, have en-
countered either members of Hermetic groups or the literature deriving
from such groups. There is however no direct evidence for Christians en-
countering Hermetic cult practices. In the second century, Clement of Al-
exandria had designated the books known by Egyptian priests as books of
Hermes, and he described a procession he had witnessed, in which the
priests carried their insignia and books, though the contents of the books
seem to correspond more to traditional Egyptian priestly literature than to
the philosophical Hermetica.105 Clement’s point in describing the wisdom
of the Egyptians contained in these encyclopedic books of Hermes was to
show that the Greeks had stolen their philosophy from the Egyptians, a
polemical use that will be reprised over two hundred years later by his fel-
low Alexandrian Cyril, as we shall see. In the late fourth century, Philas-
trius of Brescia catalogued a haeresis of Hermes Trismegistus, character-
ized by their preoccupation with astral phenomena.106 However, the only
thing Philastrius tells us about this haeresis is that it dares to give names to
the stars, names which are in fact only knowable to Jesus Christ. It thus
seems likely that Philastrius made up the haeresis solely on the basis of
103
Damascius, V. Isid. 72BC Athanassiadi: ἐν ἀδύτοις ἑκάστοτε καὶ τελεστηρίοις
ἐνδιαιτᾶσθαι τὴν ψυχήν, οὔτι κατ’ Αἴγυπτον μόνην κινοῦντι τὰς πατρίους τελετάς, ἀλλὰ
καὶ τῆς ἀλλοδαπῆς, εἴπου τι κατελέλειπτο τῶν τοιούτων. ὁ δὲ ἐσπούδασεν εἰς τὸ δυνατὸν
πρὸς ἀγυρισμὸν τῆς ἀπορρήτου τῶν θείων θεραπείας. Ed. & trans. Polymnia Athanassi-
adi, Damascius: The Philosophical History (Athens: Apamea, 1999), 185.
104
Damascius, V. Isid. 76E Athanassiadi: the first birth of Heraiscus is said to also
have been sacred and mystical, which implies a sacred and mystical second birth as well.
105
Clement of Alexandria, 6.4.35–37. Cf. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 58–59.
106
Philastrius, Div. her. 103.1. Cf. also 10.2 on the “Heliognosti,” and 113.1. Ed.
Firmin Heylen, “Filastrii episcopi Brixiensis Diversarum hereseon liber,” in CCSL 9
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1957), 207–324. Walter Scott, Hermetica (4 vols.; Oxford: Claren-
don, 1924–1936), 4:166–68; Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 210–11 n. 87.
Hermetic astrological writings. Otherwise we have no testimonies of en-

counters between Christians and Hermetists.107
On the other hand, we do know that several Christians were interested
in the Hermetic literature.108 One of the most avid readers of Hermes was
Lactantius, who wrote his Divine Institutes in the early fourth century in
North Africa. This work is in Latin, and was therefore likely not widely
read in Egypt, but it still merits some attention here since it contains the
largest number of quotations from and references to Hermes after Cyril of
Alexandria’s Against Julian, written over a century later. It has also been
argued that the Divine Institutes had a profound influence on the religious
policy of Constantine, despite the fact that it was hardly in line with what
would eventually become Christian orthodoxy.109 Lactantius’ strategy was
to use pagan prophets to convince educated pagans of the truth of Christi-
anity, since he realized that they would not be persuaded by Jewish proph-
ecies.110 Accordingly, Hermes is repeatedly cited and quoted, often in tan-
dem with the Sibyl. Scholars such as Antonie Wlosok have argued that
Hermes in fact played a crucial role in the religious outlook of Lactan-
107
Philastrius’ treatise has been hypothesized to derive from Hippolytus’ lost Syntag-
ma, and so is a fourth century treatise on the church, wrongly ascribed to Anthimus of
Nicomedia and possibly authored by Marcellus of Ancyra. Philastrius and Ps.-Anthimus
are moreover the only sources to list a heresy of Hermes and Seleucus, though Philastrius
(55–56) gives the name as Hermias and informs us that these heresiarchs were Anatolian.
According to Iamblichus, someone called Seleucus wrote about the books of Hermes
(Myst. 8.1), probably the same Seleucus that Porphyry states was a theologus, since both
authors mention him in conjunction with Manetho, the Egyptian priest and historian
(Abst. 2.55). It must remain conjectural if this Seleucus is the same that Suidas (200) says
was an Alexandrian grammarian who wrote 100 books on the gods and was a sophist in
Rome, and who Suetonius says was forced to commit suicide by Tiberius (Tib. 56). Cf.
Scott, Hermetica, 4:53; Clarke et al., Iamblichus, 307 n. 397. Ps.-Anthimus states that all
the Gnostics, from Menander to Valentinus, had in fact derived their teachings from
Hermes, Plato, and Aristotle rather than the apostles, and he provides some Hermetic
quotes, most of them also known from other sources. Cf. Alastair H. B. Logan, “Marcel-
lus of Ancyra (Pseudo-Anthimus), ‘On the Holy Church’: text, translation, and commen-
tary,” JTS 51 (2000): 81–112. We also know from Eusebius’ Against Marcellus (1.4.41)
that Marcellus accused Eusebius of following Hermes and Valentinus in making the
Logos a second and distinct god, cf. Scott, Hermetica, 4:154.
108
Cf. Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, “L’ermetismo nelle testimonianze dei Padri,” Rivista
di storia e letteratura religiosa 7 (1971): 215–51.
109
Elisabeth D. Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire: Lactantius & Rome (Ith-
aca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 64ff.
110
On the sources of Lactantius cf. Robert M. Ogilvie, The Library of Lactantius (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 33–36 (on Hermetica); Jochen Walter, Pagane Texte und
Wertvorstellungen bei Laktanz (Hyp 165; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006),
152–71 (on Hermetica).
tius,111 an outlook that Elisabeth D. Digeser has called “an inclusive Chris-
tianity.”112
Claudio Moreschini has singled out three topics that interested Lactan-
tius the most in the Hermetica.113 First, Hermes was a witness to the Eu-
hemerist teaching that the gods of Egypt were really mortal kings who
were “translated” into gods. Lactantius says that Hermes identified both
Ouranos and Kronos, as well as his own namesake, as mortal men that had
become divine (Inst. 1.61). A similar teaching can be found in CH X and
the Perfect Discourse, where the former text mentions the deified Ouranos
and Kronos (CH X, 5), while the latter mentions the deified ancestors and
namesakes of Hermes and Asclepius (Asclepius 38). The deified ancestors
function in the text to anchor the already ancient sage Hermes Trismegis-
tus to an even more remote past.
This motif is again connected to the second topic of concern to Lactan-
tius, namely primordial history. Hermes was ostensibly in a privileged po-
sition to have knowledge of the nascence of the world, as the keeper of the
ancient wisdom of Egypt, handed down from the primordial gods them-
selves. As G. S. Boys-Stones has shown, such a preoccupation with pri-
mordial wisdom was a general feature of the philosophy of the Imperial
Age. 114 Primordial wisdom is generally associated with culture heroes,
such as Orpheus, Musaios, Oannes, Zarathustra, and – of course – Hermes
Trismegistus. One particular point of importance in the Christian attitude
to Hermes as a culture hero is that he was connected to Moses through
their common connection to Egyptian wisdom. Already in the second cen-
tury BCE, Artapanus the Jew identified Hermes with Moses, claiming that
he instituted the cult of animal gods, including the ibis in Hermopolis, the
city he founded, in order to keep the populace in check, while he also in-
vented philosophy and gave the priests their sacred writings.115 Later, in
111
On the influence of the Hermetica on Lactantius’ thought, cf. Antonie Wlosok,
Laktanz und die philosophische Gnosis (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1960), 115–42, 222–31.
112
Digeser, Making, 84–90.
113
Claudio Moreschini, Hermes Christianus: The Intermingling of Hermetic Piety and
Christian Thought (CM 8; Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 33–48. Cf. also Giulia Sfameni
Gasparro, “L’ermetismo nelle testimonianze dei Padri,” in Studia Patristica vol. XI: Pa-
pers Presented to the Fifth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford
1967, Part II: Classica, Philosophica et Ethica, Theologica, Augustiniana (TUGAL 108;
Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1972), 58–64, who argues that Lactantius and Cyril seem to be
intersted only in “monistic,” and not “dualistic” Hermetism. More on Lactantius and the
Christian reception of Hermes prior to him can be found in Andreas Löw, Hermes Tris-
megistos als Zeuge der Wahrheit: Die christliche Hermetikrezeption von Athenagoras bis
Laktanz (Theoph 36; Berlin: Philo, 2002).
114
George R. Boys-Stones, Post-Hellenistic Philosophy: A Study of Its Development
from the Stoics to Origen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
115
Artapanus, Concerning the Jews, via Alexander Polyhistor, cited by Eusebius,
the Acts of the Apostles (7:22), we hear that Moses was well versed in the
wisdom of Egypt, which made Christians assume that he was taught by
Hermes or vice versa.116 Hermes was thus early on a part of what Jan Ass-
mann calls “the Moses-discourse,” where the figure of Moses is variously
put in stark opposition to Egyptian idolatry, or made the inheritor of
Egypt’s esoteric monotheism.117 This function of Hermes as the symbol of
the cultural and religious heritage of Egypt is important for the polemics
against Greek philosophy as derivative of Egyptian wisdom, as we shall
see.
The third topic that interested Lactantius was the theology of Hermes.
As in Christianity, the Hermetic system also has a demiurgic logos that is
issued from the godhead as its beloved son. Lactantius consequently inter-
preted Trismegistus as a testimony to John’s preexistent logos, Christ, in
anticipation of his incarnation. Hermetic elements less congenial to Lac-
tantius’ Christianity were largely bypassed in silence.
One might add a fourth topic of interest to Lactantius, not mentioned by
Moreschini, namely prophecy. Lactantius knew well Hermes’ prediction of
the twilight of the gods of Egypt, which he took to be a prophecy of the
inevitable triumph of Christianity. As we shall see, these four topics were
also of concern to Christian authors in the fourth and early fifth centuries,
and may thus have some explanatory power as to the reason why the three
Hermetica were included in the Nag Hammadi Codices.
Didymus the Blind

Two testimonia of Hermes in Didymus’ On the Trinity were already
known, and included in Scott’s collection of testimonia. 118 These corre-
spond to two of Cyril’s testimonia, and Didymus was therefore only in-
cluded in the critical apparatus of the testimonia of Cyril edited by Nock
and Festugière.119 However, in 1941 eight papyrus codices were found be-
low the cloister of Dair al-Qusair, in a quarry at Tura in Egypt, which

Praep. ev. 9.27.3–10. Cf. Gerard Mussies, “The Interpretatio Judaica of Thoth-Hermes,”
in Studies in Egyptian Religion: Dedicated to Professor Jan Zandee (ed. Mathieu S. H.
G. Heerma van Voss et al.; SHR 43; Leiden: Brill, 1982), 89–120.
116
Cf. Ton Hilhorst, “‘And Moses Was Instructed in All the Wisdom of the Egyp-
tians’ (Acts 7.22),” in The Wisdom of Egypt: Jewish, Early Christian, and Gnostic Es-
says in Honour of Gerard P. Luttikhuizen (ed. Anthony Hilhorst and George H. van Koo-
ten; AGJU 59; Leiden: Brill, 2005), 164, for the estoteric nature of this wisdom.
117
Cf. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monothe-
ism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).
118
Scott, Hermetica, 4:168–76. Scott also includes a passage from Trin. 3.1, which
does not explicitly refer to Hermes, but which Scott plausibly suggests might have been
adapted by Didymus from Hermes.
119
FH 23–24; Nock and Festugière, Hermès, 126–29.
turned out to contain a number of biblical commentaries by Didymus.120

Since the manuscripts also contained writings by Origen and had been in-
tentionally damaged in antiquity, it is a reasonable assumption that they
were disposed of in the course or aftermath of the Origenist controversy.
These manuscripts contain two new testimonia of Hermes Trismegistus,
which certainly deserve to be taken into consideration. After the Tura dis-
covery, the attribution of On the Trinity to Didymus has been questioned,
but I will proceed on the assumption that if the treatise is not by Didymus
himself it was written by someone in his circle, and is thus a witness to the
reception of Hermes in late fourth-century Egypt.121
Unlike Lactantius, Didymus’ audience is Christian, so he is able to rely
on biblical literature, and yet he quotes quite a few pagan authors.122 The
two Hermetic passages in On the Trinity both appear in book 2, although
Robert Grant has pointed out that there is also an uncredited paraphrase of
SH I, 1 in the beginning of book 3.123 Book 2 is devoted to demonstrating
the divinity of the Holy Spirit against the so-called Pneumatomachi or
Macedonians, 124 and in chapter 3.26–28 there appear three paraphrases
from CH VI, That the Good is in God Alone and Nowhere Else. Hermes is
however only mentioned in passing, after a direct quote from CH VI fol-
lowing the paraphrases, where Didymus writes “as also Hermes called
Trismegistus says.”125 The point that Didymus derives from Hermes is that
the essence of the good only pertains to uncreated beings, whereas created
beings can only be given the name “good,” in the relative degree that evil
120
Louis Doutreleau, “Que Savons-nous aujourd’hui des papyrus de Toura?” RSR 43
(1955): 161–93; Henri-Charles Puech, “Les nouveaux écrits d’Origine et de Didyme
découverts à Toura,” RHPR 31 (1951): 293–329; Octave Gueraud, “Note préliminaire sur
les papyrus d’Origène decouverts à Toura,” RHR 131 (1946): 85–108; Richard Layton,
Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in
Biblical Scholarship (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 2–4.
121
Cf. Grant D. Bayliss, The Vision of Didymus the Blind: A Fourth-Century Virtue-
Origenism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 46–55, for an overview of the works
of Didymus. Bayliss suggests that if Trin. was not written by Didymus then the author
was someone from his circle.
122
Robert M. Grant, “Greek Literature in the Treatise De Trinitate and Cyril Contra
Julianum,” JTS 15 (1964): 265–69; Seiler, Didymus, xiii–xiv, lists the quotes from pro-
fane literature used in book 2, chap 1–7. Besides Hermes these include two from un-
known hymns, two from Homer, and one each from Hesiod, Euripides, and Oppian.
123
Grant, “Greek Literature,” 267. Since Didymus also has a quotation from the Ti-
maeus that is closer to an excerpt from that work in the florilegium of Stobaeus than the
textus receptus, Grant claims that “in the third book Didymus is relying in part upon the
anthology traditionally ascribed to Stobaeus.”
124
Ingrid Seiler, Didymus der Blinde: De trinitate, Buch 2, Kap. 1–7 (BKP 52; Mei-
senheim am Glan: Hain, 1975), vii.
125
Didymus, Trin. 2.3.28: εἲρηται καὶ τῷ Ἑρμῇ τῷ ἐπίκλην Τρισμεγίστῳ.
is lacking and gives way to participation in the good. Therefore, Didymus

concludes, the spirit, since it is uncreated, has the same good nature as God
the Father and the Son. Hermes is not really used as an authority to prove
this point, but it seems Didymus feels the need to credit him for the direct
quote and the evocative phrase “for where there is darkness, there is no
light, and where there is night there is no day.”126
The second Hermetic passage occurs near the end of book two, among a
series of quotes from pagan authors who have testified that the Son, as the
Word, and the Spirit are equal to God.127 Hermes is preceded by an anon-
ymous oracle, which Migne suggests is Sibylline,128 and two short phrases
by Orpheus and Plato Comicus, and he is followed by a passage from
Porphyry’s History of Philosophy. Didymus is here more specific than ear-
lier, and states that the three quotes he repeats are derived from the three
books of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius. However, he then immediate-
ly goes on to say that at least the first quote is an oracular response of Aga-
thodaimon to a question regarding the “thrice holy spirit.”129 It is thus like-
ly that Hermes in his treatises to Asclepius was quoting his own teacher,
Agathodaimon, as he also does in CH XII.130 The epithet “thrice holy” is
likely to be supplied by Didymus himself, as it is not attested in the Her-
metica, while Didymus uses it twice elsewhere in On the Trinity (2.7.8 &
[PG 39] 657.16). The gist of the prophecy is that the spirit is what ani-
mates and upholds the cosmos, a teaching also found elsewhere in the
Hermetica, where the spirit is commonly viewed as the instrument of the
Demiurge. 131 Following the prophecy Didymus adds a confounding pas-
sage indicative of his view of Hermes:
And moreover, he subjects the multitude to the noblest teaching, namely those who have
no accurate knowledge about the self-sufficient Triad which is undefiled, immeasurable,
unspeakable, and forever the same. And regarding its majesty, which is so great that no
human is high-minded and lofty enough to behold something proper to it, he utters the
following: “For it is not possible to deliver such mysteries to the uninitiated, but listen
with your mind: There existed one single noetic light before the noetic light, and it is
126
Didymus, Trin. 2.3.28: ἔνθα γὰρ σκότος, οὐδαμοῦ τὸ φῶς· καὶ “ὅπου νύξ, οὐχ
ἡμέρα. ὅθεν (εἴρηται καὶ τῷ Ἑρμῇ τῷ ἐπίκλην Τρισμεγίστῳ) ἀδύνατον ἐν γενέσει εἶναι
τἀγαθόν, ἐν μόνῳ δὲ τῷ ἀγενήτῳ. ὥσπερ δὲ μετουσία πάντων ἐστὶν τῇ ὕλῃ δεδομένη,
οὕτω καὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ.” Cf. CH VI, 2.
127
Didymus, Trin. (PG 39) 753.1ff. These chapters have not received a modern edi-
tion after Migne.
128
PG 39, col. 753 n. 6.
129
Didymus, Trin. (PG 39) 756.14–16: Ἑρμοῦ Τρισμεγίστου ἐκ τῶν πρὸς τὸν
Ἀσκληπιὸν λόγων τριῶν. Ἐρομένου τινὸς τὸν ἀγαθὸν δαίμονα, περὶ τοῦ τρισαγίου
Πνεύματος ἔχρησεν οὕτως·
130
Cf. CH XII, 1, 8, 9, 13. Agathodaimon may be identified with divine mind; cf. CH
X, 23.
131
CH I, 9; XIII, 19; NHC VI 57.10–11; Asclepius 16–17.
forever the mind of the luminous mind, and it was nothing else than its unity. Although it
is always in it, it always encompasses everything with its mind and light and spirit.”132
What does it mean that Hermes has subjected the multitude, including the
ignorant, to the noblest teaching? It seems likely that the cryptic statement
alludes to the idea of an esoteric monotheism in Egypt: While the populace
at large was kept in check with idolatrous and zoolatrous practices, the
inner echelons of the priesthoods, initiated in the deeper mysteries of
Egyptian wisdom, knew that God was in fact one – or rather three seen
with Trinitarian optics.133 This is the meaning derived from Hermes’ state-
ment that such mysteries cannot be delivered to the uninitiated. Likewise,
in the sentences of Hermes to Tat (SH XI), it is said that the multitude
should be kept ignorant of the true doctrine, so that they will be kept in
check by “fear of the unseen.”134 Didymus explicitly interprets the myster-
ies of Hermes as referring to the Trinity: “Mind from mind, and noetic
light from noetic light, but furthermore also Spirit, through which he en-
compasses everything. It is God the Father, the only-begotten and his one
holy spirit that he refers to.”135 It seems that Hermes must have been trans-
lated to the gods, as Lactantius also stated, since it is asserted that no mere
human is able to behold the mysteries of the Trinity.136
We can infer then that the ancient mysteries of the Trinity taught by the
divine Hermes must be related to the insight of Moses, and this corre-
sponds to the picture of Hermes in the treatises which are undisputably
authored by Didymus. In his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Didymus ex-
plains that “since Moses, then, was educated in all the wisdom of the
132
Didymus, Trin. (PG 39) 757.8–760.2 (my trans.): Αὖθίς τε τῇ εὐγενεστέρᾳ γνώμῃ
καθυποτάττων τοὺς πολλοὺς, καὶ οὐκ ἀκριβεῖς περὶ τὴν γνῶσιν, τὴν ἕνεκα τῆς ἀχράντως,
ἀμετρήτως, ἀφάτως, καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ ὡσαύτως ἐχούσης αὐτοτελοῦς Τριάδος, περὶ ἧς οὐδεὶς
οὕτως μεγαλοφρονέστατος, οὐδὲ ὑψηλονούστατος ἀνθρώπων ἐστὶν, ὃς ἄξιόν τι τῆς
τοσαύτης ὑπεροχῆς αὐτῆς θεωρῆσαι δύναται, ἀποφθέγγεται τοιάδε· “Οὐ γὰρ ἐφικτόν
ἐστιν εἰς ἀμυήτους τοιαῦτα μυστήρια παρέχεσθαι· ἀλλὰ τῷ νῷ ἀκούσατε· Ἓν μόνον ἦν
φῶς νοερὸν πρὸ φωτὸς νοεροῦ, καὶ ἔστιν ἀεὶ νοῦς νοὸς φωτεινός· καὶ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἦν, ἢ
ἡ τούτου ἑνότης. Ἀεὶ ἐν αὐτῷ ὢν, ἀεὶ τῷ ἑαυτοῦ νοῒ καὶ φωτὶ καὶ πνεύματι πάντα
περιέχει.”
133
Cf. Artapanus apud Eusebius, Praep. ev. 9.27.3–10.
134
SH XI, 5: διὸ χρὴ τοὺς πολλοὺς φυλάττεσθαι μὴ νοοῦντας τῶν λεγομένων τὴν
ἀρετήν . . . διὸ φυλακτέον αὐτούς, ὅπως ἐν ἀγνοίᾳ ὄντες ἔλαττον ὦσι κακοὶ φόβῳ τοῦ
ἀδήλου.
135
Didymus, Trin. (PG 39) 760.9–12 (my trans.): Νοῦν ἐκ νοῦ, καὶ φῶς νοερὸν ἐκ
φωτὸς νοεροῦ, ἔτι δὲ καὶ Πνεῦμα, ᾧ πάντα περιέχει· τὸν Θεὸν Πατέρα, καὶ τὸν
Μονογενῆ, καὶ τὸ ἓν αὐτοῦ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα δηλοῖ. Cf. Sfameni Gasparro, “L’ermetismo,”
238–41, who attributes this commentary to Cyril, but who rightly connects the Hermetic
excerpt to teachings found in the Poimandres and On Rebirth.
136
Cf. Lactantius, Div. inst. 1.6.1; 7.13.4.
Egyptians (Acts 7:22)” – as Didymus also reminds the reader elsewhere137

– “he had something more than the other Hebrews, having ‘the treasure of
kings and provinces’ (Eccl 2:8), i.e. of the teachers of the Egyptian wis-
doms.” 138 The true wisdom of the Egyptians must be distinguished from
the “low” practices of popular religion, a distinction Didymus makes else-
where: “The wizards and enchanters of Egypt think highly of their sorcery
and sophistry, but Moses, the Hierophant of God, having in himself a
steadfast heart, went forth and overturned the deceit which they thought so
highly of.”139 Here Moses is designated a Hierophant, i.e. an officer of the
mysteries, as opposed to the wizards and sorcerers. In another passage
from the commentary to the Psalms, Didymus explains the rod of Aaron in
Gen 7:10–12 allegorically as the “scepter of truth” which devours the
sophistry of the Egyptians.140
Likewise, in the Tura Commentary to the Psalms, Didymus uses Her-
mes to counter the casters of horoscopes while discussing Ps 24:17 (“the
troubles of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses”):
Indeed, one should not pay attention to those who peddle horoscopes, for they say that
“fate allots something to humans.” But if someone is reverent to God and becomes wise
according to God, he gets away from the things that threaten him. Also the learned men
among the Egyptians, one of whom is Hermes Trismegistus, say that “the wise man is no
longer subject to fate, he gets away from the world.” And just as the savior says that it is
possible to be in the world but no longer of it, whenever one possesses the higher mind
and heavenly citizenship, so they speak unclearly and say in imitation of us that “the
wise man dissolves his fate.” At least some of the purveyors of horoscopes understand
the great words in this manner, that “There are judgements (?) that I am subject to. Make
me exterior to them, dissolve fate.”141
137
Didymus, Comm. Job 108.29; Comm. Ps. 87.11.
138
Didymus, Comm. Eccles. 40.7–10 (my trans.): “Μωϋσῆς” γοῦν “παιδευθεὶς πάσῃ
σοφίᾳ | Αἰγυπτίω̣[ν]” πλέον τι εἶχεν τῶν ἄλλων Ἑβραίων ἔχων “περιουσιασμὸν βασιλέων
| καὶ τῶν χ[ω]ρῶν” τῶν εἰσηγητῶν τῶν Αἰγυπτίων σοφιῶν. Ed. Gerhard Binder and Leo
Liesenborghs, Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zum Ecclesiastes I (PTA 25; Bonn:
Habelt, 1979).
139
Didymus, Fragmenta in Psalmos (e commentario altero) 648a.11–15 (my trans.):
Μέγα ἐφρόνουν ἐπὶ γοητείᾳ καὶ σοφιστείᾳ οἱ Αἰγύπτου φαρμακοὶ καὶ ἐπαοιδοί, ἀλλ’ ὁ
θεοῦ ἱεροφάντης Μωυσῆς, ἔχων ἐν ἑαυτῷ καρδίαν βαθεῖαν, προσελθὼν ἀνέτρεψε τὴν
ἀπάτην ἐφ’ ᾗ μέγα ἐφρόνουν. καὶ οὕτως ὑψώθη θεὸς πρὸς πάντων ἀνυμνούμενος. ὁ
ταύτην δὲ τὴν βαθεῖαν νόησιν ἔχων δέχεται αὐτὴν ὑπὸ τοῦ τὰ πάντα ἐρευνῶντος
πνεύματος. Ed. Ekkehard Mühlenberg, Psalmenkommentare aus der Katenenüberlie-
ferung (2 vols.; PTS 15–16; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975–1977).
140
Didymus, Comm. Ps. 104.18–20: τὸ γὰρ σκῆπτρον τῆς ἀληθείας, ὃ ὁ θεραπευτὴς
τοῦ θεοῦ κατέχει, ῥιφὲν | καὶ προταθὲν καταπίνει τὰς σοφιστείας τῶν Αἰγυπτίων. Ed. M.
Gronewald, Didymos der Blinde. Psalmenkommentar II (PTA 4; Bonn: Habelt, 1968).
141
Didymus, Comm. Ps. 88.10–18 (my trans.): οὐ γὰρ προσεκτέον τοῖς εἰσηγουμένοις
γενεθλιαλογίαν· τοῦτο γὰρ ἐ|κεῖνοι λέγουσιν ὅτι ἐπιμετρεῖ τινα ἡ εἱμαρμένη τοῖς
ἀνθρώποις. ἐὰν δέ τις θεοσεβήσῃ καὶ κατὰ θεὸν | σοφὸς γένηται, ἔξω γίνεται τῶν
Didymus disagrees with the astrologers that all humans are subject to fate,
since those who are reverent to God are free from astral fatality, at least
those who become wise in divine matters. Hermes is invoked to bolster
Didymus’ claim that wisdom is the key to freedom from the world, and it
is here interesting to note that he is considered to be one of the learned
men of Egypt, and he is used against the astrologers, of whom he is often
considered to be the tutelary god. However, Hermes is accused of imitating
the saying of the savior, that it is possible to be in the world but not of the
world (cf. John 17:11, 14–18), when he says that “the wise man dissolves
his destiny.” This saying is attributed to Hermes in the Commentary to
Ecclesiastes, considered below. The last sentence is likely also taken from
Hermes, and some of the astrologers are in that case said to agree with him
that it is possible to become exempt from astral fatality. According to
Didymus, then, Hermes is in agreement with the savior, although he ex-
pressed himself in less clear terms (ψελλίσαντες) and in fact imitated the
Christian logos (ἀπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων λέγ<ουσιν>).142
The second quote from Hermes in the Tura papyri, in the Commentary
to Ecclesiastes, also deals with the dissolution of destiny by the wise man.
Didymus here again uses Hermes to confirm a point he has made:
And do not be amazed if we say this. Also that Egyptian who they call Trismegistus says
that “the wise man dissolves fate. He is not subject to necessity, nor is he subject to the
world, but he has transcended heaven, his understanding has transcended the apparent
world.” So they say that common people are subject to it (fate). So the one who has
transcended the human existence is also the one who is able to say: “I do not see the
apparent but the invisible,” since the apparent is temporal while the invisible is
[etern]al.143

ἐπηρτημένων. καὶ Αἰγυπτίων οὖν οἱ λόγιοι, ὧν ἐστιν ὁ τρισ|μέγιστος Ἑρμῆς, λέγ<ουσιν>
ὅτι ὁ σοφὸς οὐκέτι ὑπόκειται τῇ εἱμαρμένῃ, ἔξω γίνεται τοῦ κόσμου. ὡς | λέγει ὁ σωτὴρ
δυνατὸν εἶναι ὄντα ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ μηκέτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ εἶναι, ὅταν ἄνω ἔχῃ τὸν νοῦν | καὶ τὴν
πολιτείαν οὐράνιον, οὕτω ἐκεῖνοι ψελλίσαντες ἀπὸ τῶν ἡμετέρων λέγουσιν ὅτι | ὁ σοφὸς
λύει τὴν εἱμαρμένην. τινὲς γοῦν τῶν περὶ γενεθλιαλογίαν ἐχόντων οὕτως εἰσακού|ονται
τὰ τοιαῦτα ῥητὰ ὅτι· “κρισσαί εἰσιν αἷς ὑπόκειμαι. ἔξω τούτων με ποίησον, λῦσον τὴν
εἱμαρμέ|νην”. Ed. Gronewald, Psalmenkommentar II. The word κρισσαί is a hapax, and
the editors have not translated it. I have assumed it is a corruption of κρίσεις.
142
The editors have emended the singular λεγι in the ms to λέγουσιν, the plural refer-
ring to the learned men of Egypt, but the parallel in the Commentary to Ecclesiastes
shows that it is Hermes who is credited with the saying.
143
Didymus, Comm. in Eccl. 167.15–23 (my trans.): καὶ οὐ θαυμαστόν, εἰ ἡμεῖς τοῦτο
λέγομεν. καὶ ὁ Αἰγύπτι[ο]ς | ἐκεῖν̣ο̣[ς ὃν] λέγουσ[ι]ν, Τρισμέγιστος λέγει, ὅτι {οὐ} λύει
τὴν εἱμαρμένην ὁ σοφός· | ο̣ὐ̣κ̣ ἔ̣[στιν ὑ]π̣ὸ̣ τ̣ὴ̣ν̣ ἀ̣ν̣άγκην, οὐδὲ ὑπὸ τὸν κόσμον ἔστιν,
ἀλλὰ ἄνω γέγο̣[ν]εν | τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ἄνω γέγ̣[ο]ν̣[εν] ἡ δι̣ά̣νοια τῶν φαινομένων. τοὺς
[ἀ]γελαίους οὖν | ἀνθρώπους λέγουσιν ὑπ’ αὐτὴν εἶναι. ὁ οὖν ὑπ[ε]ρ[ανα]βεβηκὼς τὸν
ἀνθρώπ[ι]|νον βίον [κ]α̣ὶ δυνάμενος εἰπεῖν· “σκοπῶ ο[ὐ τὰ] φαινόμενα, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὴ
βλε|πόμενα” τ[ῷ] τὰ φαινόμενα πρόσκαιρα εἶναι, [αἰών]ια δὲ τὰ μὴ φαινόμενα. Ed. Jo-
hannes Kramer, Didymos der Blinde. Kommentar zum Ecclesiastes III (PTA 13; Bonn:
Here it is clear that Hermes has “transcended the human existence” and has
thus become divine. The statement “I do not see the apparent but the invis-
ible” is reminiscent of what Tat says after he has been reborn in On the
Rebirth (CH XIII): “I no longer picture things with the sight of my eyes
but with the mental energy that comes through the powers,” and Hermes
subsequently confirms that the rebirth entails no longer picturing things in
three dimensions.144 Such a teaching was naturally interesting to Didymus,
who reportedly was told by Antony that he should not mourn the loss of
his bodily vision, since he had been blessed with heavenly eyes that see
God. 145 Being reborn, according to CH XIII, also entails that the twelve
avengers related to the Zodiac, which represent bodily passions, are chased
away, and consequently fate no longer has any power over such a per-
son.146
If the author of On the Trinity is not Didymus, then it is at least clear
that he like Didymus had access to and read sympathetically treatises by
Hermes. Although the relationship between Hermes and Moses is not
spelled out, it is clear that both are connected with the wisdom of the
Egyptians, which consisted of an esoteric monotheism, as opposed to the
religion of the common Egyptians and the spells of the wizards. A compar-
ison with the points of interest to Lactantius shows that Didymus’ main
concern was the theology of Hermes, but also his authority derived from
having become divine (euhemerism) and his status as the culture hero of
Egypt, which connects him to Moses.
Cyril of Alexandria
Cyril was about twenty years old when Didymus died in 398, and might
thus have encountered the blind sage, who was after all a prominent Chris-
tian teacher in Alexandria where the future bishop grew up. 147 Rufinus
studied with Didymus from 371 to 377, but also attended the lessons of
Cyril’s uncle, Theophilus. 148 Since Didymus was only condemned as an
Origenist after his death, it is possible that Cyril attended his lessons; at

Habelt, 1970).
144
CH XIII, 11 and 13: φαντάζομαι, οὐχ ὁράσει ὀφθαλμῶν ἀλλὰ τῇ διὰ δυνάμεων
νοητικῇ ἐνεργείᾳ . . . Αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ παλιγγενεσία, ὦ τέκνον, τὸ μηκέτι φαντάζεσθαι εἰς τὸ
σῶμα τὸ τριχῇ διαστατόν. On seeing the invisible, cf. also CH IV, 5–6; V, 5; X, 4, 6;
XIII, 3; Asclepius 29.
145
Jerome, Ep. 68.2; Rufinus, HE 2.7; Layton, Didymus, 19–26; Elizabeth A. Clark,
The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 182–83.
146
CH XIII, 12. Cf. Bull, “Tradition of Hermes,” 209–16.
147
Layton, Didymus, 15ff.
148
Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (ECF; London: Routledge, 2000), 4, 204 n. 8.
least he reproduces the same quotes of Hermes that Didymus or his associ-
ate used in On the Trinity, along with an uncredited paraphrase of the
comments on the quotes, so Cyril must at least have read this treatise
well.149 It is however likely that Cyril did not merely reproduce the quotes
from On the Trinity, but also had access to the same Hermetic treatises,
since he specifies that the quotes are from the third of the three books of
Hermes to Asclepius.150
It is in his rebuttal of the polemics against Christianity, written by the
long deceased Emperor Julian, that Cyril makes extensive use of Hermeti-
ca. 151 He quotes from four treatises known from elsewhere, and another
thirteen otherwise unknown treatises.152 The reason that he resorts to Her-
mes in this work, and not in any other of his writings, is no doubt due to
the fact that he here – like Lactantius in the Divine Institutes – wrote for a
pagan and not a Christian audience. The pagan contemporaries of Cyril in
Egypt must consequently still have considered Hermes an authority, mak-
ing him an apt tool to turn against the philosopher-emperor still admired
by the pagans. Cyril had attracted opprobrium for the murder of the influ-
ential philosopher Hypatia in 415, no matter what his actual role in the
deed was, and it is likely that the treatise is his unrepentant response to
those of her pupils who still venerated her teachings, which we have seen
were likely influenced to some degree by the Hermetica. Hypatia’s Chris-
tian student, Synesius, who stayed in Alexandria for a significant period,
reflects the standing of Hermes when he places him on the same level as
Amous, Zoroaster, and Antony.153 In the treatise On Providence, Synesius
149
Cf. Grant, “Greek Literature,” 271, 273–74.
150
Cyril, c. Jul. 1.556 A & B = FH 23 & 24. Jacques Liébaert, “Saint Cyrille
d’Alexandrie et la culture antique,” Mélanges de science religieuse 12 (1955): 5–21,
thinks it most likely that Cyril had access to a Hermetic florilegium.
151
Cf. Nock and Festugière, Hermès, 4:125–43; Paul Burguière and Pierre Évieux,
Cyrille d’Alexandrie: Contre Julien, tome I, Livres I et II (SC 322; Paris: Cerf, 1985);
Christoph Riedweg, ed., Kyrill von Alexandrien: Gegen Julian (2 vols.; GCS.NF 20–21;
Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016–2017), clxviii–ix. I thank Professor Riedweg for generously
sharing the sections relevant to Hermes before publication.
152
Cyril, c. Jul. 1.43 (= SH I, 1); 2.22 (= CH XI, 22); 2.42 (= CH XIV, 6–10); 4.23 (=
Asclepius 29). The remaining fourteen excerpts are FH 23–35, in Nock and Festugière,
Hermès, 4:125–43.
153
Synesius, Dion 10.26–30: ὦ τολμηρότατοι πάντων, εἰ μὲν ἠπιστάμεθα ὑμᾶς
εὐμοιρήσαντας ἐκείνην τῆς ψυχῆς τὴν ἀξίαν, ἣν Ἀμοῦς, ἣν Ζωροάστρης, ἣν Ἑρμῆς, ἣν
Ἀντώνιος, οὐκ ἂν ἠξιοῦμεν φρενοῦν, οὐδὲ διὰ μαθήσεως ἄγειν, νοῦ μέγεθος ἔχοντας, ᾧ
προτάσεις εἰσὶ καὶ τὰ συμπεράσματα. Cf. Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 179, who thinks
Ἀμοῦς refers to Ammon, similar to Hadot, Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism, 6–7,
who points out that Amous is a likely corruption of Thamous in Plato’s Phaedrus, who is
the recipient of the letters of Theuth (i.e. Thoth-Hermes). See also Lindsay, Origins of
Alchemy, 360.
furthermore presents the myth of Osiris and Typhon as a political allegory

for the contemporary court at Constantinople, and the myth betrays famili-
arity with Hermetic teachings.154
Julian had accused Christianity of being a new-fangled superstition,
breaking with both Greek and Jewish traditions, and Cyril in response had
to demonstrate that Christianity is in accord with the teaching of Moses,
which is superior to, and more ancient than Greek philosophy.155 Hermes is
however not counted among the Greeks, and he is quoted with approval.
The reason for this enthusiasm is that it is crucial for Cyril’s argument to
prove the antiquity of Moses in relation to the Greek philosophers, and to
show that what few genuine insights they had were actually stolen from
Moses.156 Hermes helps him demonstrate this, since his texts are proof that
Egyptian wisdom harmonizes with Moses:
But I think Hermes the Egyptian, who they say also had the title of ‘Trismegistus,’
should be considered worthy of consideration and mention. For the men of that time held
him in high esteem and, as some think, they likened him to the one who, according to
myth, was born of Zeus and Maia. Now, this Hermes of Egypt, although he was an initia-
tor of certain rites and always resided near the temples of idols, appears to have had the
same doctrines as Moses, even if not absolutely and faultlessly, but at any rate in part;
and he also benefited from them.157
Despite his connection to initiatory rites and idolatrous temples, Hermes

has profited from the teachings of Moses and has thus approached the
truth. According to this version, Atlas, the maternal grandfather of Her-
mes, was ostensibly born when Moses was seven (c. Jul. 1.11), and so it
follows that Hermes was born two generations after Moses. Cyril quotes a
doctored passage from Diodorus Siculus to the effect that Moses was the
one who gave the Egyptians their laws, and was therefore called by them a
God. In fact, Diodorus states that Hermes gave the Egyptians their laws,
while Moses gave the Judeans theirs.158 Another source quoted by Cyril,
154
Cameron and Long, Barbarians and Politics, 52, 264, 290–99.
155
Burguière and Évieux, Cyrille, 59–60.
156
Claudio Morescini, “I sapienti pagani nel Contra Iulianum di Cirillo di Alessan-
dria,” Cassiodorus 5 (1999): 11-33 at 28.
157
Cyril, c. Jul. 1.41 (trans. Moreschini, Hermes Christianus, 85): Οἶμαι δὲ δεῖν
ἀξιῶσαι λόγου καὶ μνήμης τὸν Αἰγύπτιον Ἑρμῆν, ὃν δὴ καὶ ‘Τρισμέγιστον’ ὠνομάσθαι
φασί, τετιμηκότων αὐτὸν τῶν κατ’ ἐκεῖνο καιροῦ <ὡς θεὸν> καί, καθά τισι δοκεῖ, τῷ ἐκ
Διὸς καὶ Μαίας μυθολογουμένῳ γενέσθαι παρεικαζόντων αὐτόν. οὑτοσὶ τοιγαροῦν ὁ
κατ’ Αἴγυπτον Ἑρμῆς, καίτοι τελεστὴς ὢν καὶ τοῖς τῶν εἰδώλων τεμένεσι προσιζήσας
ἀεί, πεφρονηκὼς εὑρίσκεται τὰ Μωσέως, εἰ καὶ μὴ εἰς ἅπαν ὀρθῶς καὶ ἀνεπιλήπτως,
ἀλλ’ οὖν ἐκ μέρους· ὠφέληται γὰρ καὶ αὐτός. Ed. Riedweg, Kyrill, 69 (the emendation
<ὡς θεὸν> is unnecessary).
158
That Moses was called a god by the Egyptians Cyril explains with reference to Ex-
odus: “Behold, I have given you as a god to Pharaoh” (Exod 7.1).
from fifteen Hermetic books composed by an Egyptian living in Athens,159

credits Hermes with dividing Egypt into nomes and making it arable, and
furthermore inventing arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, astrology, the arts,
and grammar (c. Jul. 1.41). Thus, according to Cyril, the culture hero of
Egypt, Hermes, relied on the teachings and laws of the culture hero of Is-
rael, Moses. This reverses the position of Didymus, where Moses is the
beneficiary of Egyptian wisdom, by which he means Hermes’ teachings.
Many centuries after Hermes, according to Cyril, Pythagoras and Plato
spent time in Egypt, acquiring the sciences (μαθήματα) and coming to ad-
mire the writings of Moses that were revered there (1.18–19), and that is
why their philosophies are better than those of other Greek philosophers
who did not go to Egypt. After the passage quoted above, which describes
the antiquity of Hermes Trismegistus, Cyril recounts the opinions of Py-
thagoras, Plato and Porphyry on the topic of God, and then delivers a
lengthy Hermetic passage meant to demonstrate that these Greek philoso-
phers relied on Hermes. The illegitimate line of successors is thus traced
from Moses through Hermes to the Greek philosophers. Hermes’ apprecia-
tion of Moses was only partial, and it follows that the Greek philosophers
had an even more imperfect understanding of the true doctrine. An exam-
ple of this is a lengthy rebuttal of the view Julian had derived from Plato’s
Timaeus (41ad), that the creator god let subordinate creator gods create
humans and animals; here Cyril uses a number of Hermetic passages to
demonstrate the Mosaic position, that one and the same god created both
the world as well as the beings living in it.160 Cyril then goes on to demon-
strate that Hermes and the philosophers also had an imperfect understand-
ing of the logos, which Hermes identifies as the son of God, as well as the
spirit. Hermes is thus not only an early witness of Christ, but also of the
Holy Trinity.161
Like Lactantius, Cyril sees Hermes as a human made into a god and an
early witness of the truth of Christianity, though he reduces his antiquity
so that he postdates Moses. This is important for him in order to affirm the
priority of Moses, on whom ultimately everything that is of any worth in
the Platonic and Pythagorean philosophies depends. We thus see the arch-
bishop of Alexandria, the champion of Trinitarian orthodoxy, embrace
Hermes in his battle against Greek philosophy, even though he has some
reservations concerning his connections with Egyptian idolatry. This atti-
tude is quite close to that of Augustine, who in his City of God, written
shortly before Against Julian, also commends Hermes on his insights con-
159
This anonymous source must be an Egyptian because he refers to Hermes as a fel-
low countryman.
160
Cyril, c. Jul. 2.32ff. Cf. Moreschini, “Sapienti,” 32.
161
Cf. Moreschini, “Sapienti,” 31.
cerning the one true God, while lamenting his defense of idolatry in the
Perfect Discourse, which he says must have been due to demonic inspira-
tion. 162 Interestingly, Cyril probably knew the Perfect Discourse, for he
uses a passage from this work to argue against sacrifices to the gods.163
Cyril must consequently either have known the passage in question only
from an excerpt, similar to the one we have in NHC VI (in fact the quote
of Cyril starts just where our Coptic excerpt ends), or he ignores Hermes’
idolatry on purpose, in order to turn him against Julian more effectively.
Augustine also shares Cyril’s chronology, saying that philosophy first
flourished in Egypt under Hermes Trismegistus, who lived two generations
after Moses. 164 Both Cyril and Augustine probably rely on Eusebius’
Chronicle in making Atlas and Moses coeval.165
Hermes in Nag Hammadi Codex VI
The question now remains if the foregoing evaluation of the role of Her-
mes among Christians and Pagans in Egypt of the fourth and early fifth
century can shed any light on why Hermes was included in Nag Hammadi
Codex VI. The apparent disparity of the contents of this codex, as com-
pared to the other codices in the collection, has caused some puzzlement to
scholars. After the overtly Christian Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles
(NCH VI,1), we are treated to a revelatory self-predication from a female
wisdom figure in Thunder: Perfect Mind (NCH VI,2), and then a treatise
on the soul in the Authoritative Discourse (NCH VI,3), a treatise on the
ages of the world from the creation until the present in the Concept of Our
Great Power (NCH VI,4), and a short, anonymized excerpt from Plato’s
Republic (NCH VI,5). Then follow the three Hermetica, of which the first,
The Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth (NCH VI,6), describes the as-
cent of Hermes and his son Tat to the eighth sphere above the stars; the
second is a Prayer of Thanksgiving (NCH VI,7), corresponding to the one
preserved in Latin at the end of the Perfect Discourse, and in Greek in Pa-
pyrus Mimaut (PGM III); and the third is an excerpt from the Perfect Dis-
course (NCH VI,8), containing an elaboration of the relationship between
162
Augustine, Civ. Dei 8.23–26.
163
Cyril, c. Jul. 4.23.
164
Augustine, Civ. Dei 18.39.
165
Eusebius’s Chronicle is only preserved in an Armenian translation and Jerome’s
Latin adaptation. For the dating of Moses and Atlas, see Josef Karst, Eusebius’ Werke V:
Die Chronik aus dem Armenischen übersetzt mit textkritischem Commentar (Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag, 1911), 86, 161.
humans and the gods, a prophecy of the end of the world, and a description
of what happens to the soul after death.
In the early stages of research on the Nag Hammadi Codices, the pres-
ence of pagan works in Codex VI was attributed to the eclectic tendencies
of the “Gnostics” who were believed to possess the library.166 When the
hypothesis of a Pachomian provenance for the library was first advanced,
following John Barns’ discovery of Pachomian material in the carton-
nage,167 the presence of pagan texts were considered to preclude the notion
that the library was ever used as the “sacred texts” of one and the same
congregation:
As an antithesis [to the pagan text Asclepius (NHC VI,8)] we may recall the chapter κατὰ
εἰδωλολατρείας in the Greek Pachomian Paralipomena where the subject in both cases is
man as creator of gods, in the Hermetic version in a positive sense and in the Pachomian
version naturally in a negative sense.168
Instead it was argued that the texts may be interpreted as heresiological

weapons used by the Pachomian monks to combat the heretics.169 It was
later recognized that the Pachomian material in the bindings did not neces-
sitate a Pachomian origin of the texts, since papyri for binding codices
could be bought from a local papyrus-seller, or procured from dumps of
discarded papyri. Many therefore argued that the presence of “Gnostic”
and “pagan” texts made a monastic provenance unlikely. Indeed, Jean-
Pierre Mahé, the authority on Hermetism, echoed the sentiments of Do-
resse in seeing the readers of the Nag Hammadi Codices as Gnostics who
might have been sympathetic to Hermetic teachings. 170 Alexandr Khos-
royev later wrote an influential monograph attacking the monastic hypoth-
esis, suggesting instead that the owners of the codices were untraditional,
educated urbanites who were interested in esoteric literature.171 Monks, he
166
Jean Doresse and Togo Mina, “Nouveaux textes gnostiques coptes découverts en
haute-Égypte: La bibliotheque de Chenoboskion,” VC 3 (1949): 137.
167
John W. Barns, “Greek and Coptic Papyri from the Covers of the Nag Hammadi
Codices: A Preliminary Report,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts: In Honour of
Pahor Labib (ed. Martin Krause; NHS 6; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 9–18.
168
Torgny Säve-Söderbergh, “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentations? The
‘Sitz im Leben’ of the Nag Hammadi Library,” in Les textes de Nag Hammadi: Colloque
du Centre d’Histoire des Religions (Strasbourg, 23–25 Octobre 1974) (ed. Jacques-
Étienne Ménard; NHS 7; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 10.
169
Säve-Söderbergh, “Holy Scriptures,” 12.
170
Mahé, Hermès, 26; cf. Armand Veilleux, “Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt,” in
The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (ed. Birger A. Pearson and James E. Goehring; SAC;
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 284.
171
Alexandr Khosroyev, Die Bibliothek von Nag Hammadi: Einige Probleme des
Christentums in Ägypten während der ersten Jahrhunderte (Altenberge: Oros, 1995), 98,
101
conjectured, could have found little of use in unbiblical literature.172 Ste-

phen Emmel later expanded on Khosroyev’s thesis, claiming that the urban
Christians translating Greek esoteric literature into Coptic in fact endeav-
ored to replace the ancient Egyptian pagan literature with “a new ‘esoteric-
mystical Egyptian wisdom literature’ – being ‘Egyptian’ above all by vir-
tue of being in Coptic rather than in Greek.”173 He bases this idea on an
article by Niclas Förster, but Förster speaks only of The Discourse on the
Eighth and the Ninth as relying on Egyptian wisdom-speculations, and
then only in its Greek Vorlage, not the Coptic Nag Hammadi collection as
a whole.174 But contra the hypothesis of Khosroyev and Emmel, there is
nothing to preclude that monastic readers may have been interested in trea-
tises that claimed to represent ancient Egyptian wisdom, such as the Her-
metica and in part the Thunder: Perfect Mind, and other authors have sug-
gested that monks did indeed read pagan literature. 175 It is important to
recall that Didymus the Blind was a monk with a cell in Nitria, who obvi-
ously had read Hermetica, and sympathetically at that. We shall also see
that the two Alexandrian monks Panodorus and Annianus, writing in the
late fourth and early fifth centuries, had read certain Hermetic treatises that
they made use of in their chronographies. This proves that monks did read
Hermetica in Lower Egypt, and there is no particular reason that the same
should not also be the case in Upper Egypt, where we have seen that Her-
metic groups were still likely in existence in the fourth century. It remains
to be seen how monks were likely to read and understand the Hermetica.
In his seminal deconstruction of the term “Gnosticism,” Michael Wil-
liams also took the pagan Hermetic texts into consideration, and argued
that these could very well have been read by Christians as edifying litera-
ture, in unison with the rest of Codex VI. Williams rightly pointed out that
the apocalypse of the Perfect Discourse could have been read in light of
172
Khosroyev Bibliothek, 82–83: “Deshalb ist es schwer vorzustellen, dass die Pa-
chomianer als ihre erbauliche Lektüre Bücher benutzt haben könnten, die oft nicht nur
mit der Bibel und den Geboten der Väter nichts zu tun hatten, sondern auch das Entge-
gengesetzte lehrte.”
173
Stephen Emmel, “The Coptic Gnostic Texts as Witnesses to the Production and
Transmission of Gnostic (and Other) Traditions,” in Das Thomasevangelium: Entste-
hung–Rezeption–Theologie (ed. Jörg Frey, Enno E. Popkes, and Jens Schröter; BZNW
157; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 48.
174
Niclas Förster, “Zaubertexte in ägyptischen Tempelbibliotheken und die hermet-
ische Schrift ‘Über die Achtheit und Neunheit,’” in Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a
New Millennium: Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies,
Leiden, August 27–September 2, 2000 (ed. Mat Immerzeel and Jacques van der Vliet;
OLA 133; Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 737.
175
Frederik Wisse, “Gnosticism and Early Monasticism in Egypt,” in Gnosis: Fest-
schrift für Hans Jonas (ed. Barbara Aland; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht,
1978), 440.
the eschatology of The Concept of Our Great Power.176 However, he over-

looked the fact that the reason the world is predicted to end in the Perfect
Discourse is that the gods will leave their statues and abandon Egypt. This
twilight of the gods is caused by the decline of true religion which is la-
mented as a great disaster. This attitude to idolatry is thus the complete
opposite to that found in the Authoritative Discourse, where it is said that
the Father of the Universe is exalted over the idols worshipped by the pa-
gans (ⲛⲉⲩⲉⲓⲇⲱⲗⲟⲛ; 33.27–32), and that the temples of the pagans are mere
stones that will perish (34.13–17).177 Furthermore, the Coptic translator of
Plato’s Republic has interpolated a passage saying that it is profitable to
“cast down every likeness (ⲡⲓⲛⲉ ⲛⲓⲙ) of the evil beast and trample them
along with the likenesses of the lion (ⲛ̄ⲉⲓⲛⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡⲙⲟⲩⲉⲓ)” (50.25–28).178 We
would expect the monastic reader to sympathize with these denouncements
of idolatry against the endorsement of Hermes Trismegistus.
Williams moreover suggested that the character Asclepius in the Perfect
Discourse could have been identified with Christ as a doctor in Peter and
the Twelve.179 However, in order to produce this parallel Williams relies on
a passage describing the homonymous ancestor of Asclepius as the inven-
tor of medicine, a passage which is only found in the full version of the
text in a Latin translation (Asclepius 38), and not in the Coptic fragment.
This goes against his principle of reading Codex VI as a unity, since it pre-
supposes that the reader had knowledge that cannot be found in the codex.
Yet, although we cannot assume that a reader knew the other passage from
the Perfect Discourse, a well-informed reader might still in the fourth and
fifth century be expected to know that Asclepius was the patron god of
medicine. But in that case Williams still has to explain that whoever com-
posed the codex intended for the reader to see in the god Asclepius, in the
last treatise of the codex, an allusion to Christ as a doctor in the first trea-
tise. Would the reader be likely to identify Christ with the Egyptian Ascle-
pius, Imouthes/Imhotep? The deity had a sanitarium for incubation oracles
in nearby Thebes, but that became defunct around 200 CE, although sacri-
fices to an unnamed god continued into the early fourth century.180
176
Williams, Rethinking, 258.
177
Admittedly the pagans are here portrayed as better than the ignorant and mindless
people, who hear call to salvation but do not heed it.
178
On the interpolations in this text, cf. Christian H. Bull, “An Origenistic Adaptation
of Plato in Nag Hammadi Codex VI,” in Studia Patristica (Leuven: Peeters, forthcom-
ing).
179
Williams, Rethinking, 259.
180
Adam Łajtar, “Proskynema Inscriptions of a Corporation of Iron-Workers from
Hermonthis in the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari: New Evidence for
Pagan Cults in Egypt in the 4th Cent. A.D.,” JJP 21 (1991): 53–70.
In a later article, Michael Williams with Lance Jenott again discusses

the coherence of Codex VI.181 An important part of their argument is the
scribal note, which explains that the scribe has had many treatises “of that
one” – i.e., of Hermes – available to him, but has copied only one, fearing
that his recipients already possessed them. The note is important in several
respects: It proves that more Hermetica circulated in Coptic milieus, as has
recently been confirmed by the inclusion of Corpus Hermeticum treatise
XIII, On the Rebirth, in Codex Tchacos;182 it indicates that whoever com-
missioned the book had a set order in mind, which the scribe took it upon
himself to change; and it demonstrates that the recipients of the codex
were a community who had a common library, since they are addressed in
the plural and reference is made to their books. The latter point in all like-
lihood points to a monastic community.183 Williams and Jenott further ar-
gue that the unifying principle of Codex VI is a preoccupation with divine
power and a revelatory Logos, sometimes conveyed in writing, and that it
was read seamlessly by its Christian readers. Although the problem of the
attitude to idolatry is again avoided, one can readily agree with Williams
and Jenott that revelation is a major concern in the codex.
However, in light of what we know of the Christian reception of Her-
metic literature we need not postulate that the readers of Codex VI harmo-
nized Hermes completely with Christian tenets. We have seen that Chris-
tian authors seem to have been especially interested in Hermes as a witness
to Trinitarian theology, euhemerism, primordial history, and eschatology.
There are indeed several theological passages in the Nag Hammadi Her-
metica that are similar to those utilized by Lactantius and Cyril. In the
Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth we learn that the word is an off-
spring of light (55.26–27), and that there is an unbegotten, self-begotten,
and begotten divinity (57.13–18; 63.21–23). The father is at one point also
referred to as spirit (59.7). In the Perfect Discourse there is a passage also
181
Michael A. Williams and Lance Jenott, “Inside the Covers of Codex VI,” in Copti-
ca – Gnostica – Manichaica: mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk (ed. Louis Painchaud
and Paul-Hubert Poirier; BCNH.É 7; Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2006),
1025–52.
182
Wurst, “Weitere neue Fragmente.”
183
It is possible that the scribe was not himself a monk, for the scribal note lacks any
of the pious well-wishing found in the other colophons. As in Codex II: “Remember me
also, my brethren, [in] your prayers: Peace to the saints and the spiritual ones” (NHC II
145.20–3). Or consider the note between The Teachings of Silvanus and Three Steles of
Seth, in Codex VII (118.8–9): “Ichthys, wonder, extraordinary!” and at the end of the
codex: “This book belongs to the fatherhood. It is the son who has copied it. Bless me,
Father. I bless you, Father, in peace. Amen” (127.29–33). Lundhaug and Jenott, Monastic
Origins, 197–206, have however plausibly argued that a monastic book-exchange net-
work would account for the scribal note.
quoted in Lactantius, stating that “when these things happen,” namely the
cosmic calamities predicted, “the Lord and Father and God and creator of
the first and only God will look upon events, and will defy disorder with
his own will, which is goodness …”184 Lactantius interpreted this passage
to confirm the Christian idea that God will send his Son to destroy all evil-
doers and liberate the pious, and it is likely that the readers of Codex VI
would understand the passage in the same way.
We also find traces of euhemerism in that both Hermes and Tat are
clearly humans who became divine upon their ascent to heaven in Dis-
course on the Eighth and the Ninth, and Hermes refers to “my temple” in
Diospolis, 185 while the Perfect Discourse claims that the statues of the
gods are made “from the lowest being of humans,” according to the ap-
pearance of human bodies.186 A later passage in the Asclepius elaborates
that the earthly gods are indeed divinized humans of ancient times, but that
passage is not preserved in the Coptic, so we may not presume that the
readers of Codex VI knew this doctrine.187 It is likely that a monastic read-
er would agree with Augustine and Cyril that Hermes’ adherence to idola-
try was misguided, and would rather follow the admonition of the rewrit-
ten Republic of Plato, that the images should be trampled.188
There is no explicit reference to the primordium in the three Hermetic
treatises in the Nag Hammadi Codices, but there is reason to believe that
one of the main reasons for their inclusion was Hermes’ reputation as an
ancient Egyptian sage. A preoccupation of the codex seems to be not only
revelation, as Williams and Jenott have pointed out, but especially revela-
tions uttered by primordial or transcendent revealers. In Thunder: Perfect
Mind the revealer is the “first and the last,” whereas that of the Concept of
Our Great Power is the titular Great Power who existed from the begin-
ning. Likewise, the Trimorphic Protennoia, which was included within the
covers of Codex VI some time before its burial, is also narrated by the titu-
lar primordial “First thought in three forms.” The idea of placing the Acts
of Peter and the Twelve Apostles in the beginning of the codex might thus
have been to show that the primordial revealers are in accord with the
highly allegorical tale of Christian redemption contained in that text, in
184
Lactantius, Div. inst. 7.18.4: Ἐπὰν δὴ ταῦτα γένηται, ὦ Ἀσκληπιέ, τότε ὁ κύριος
καὶ πατὴρ καὶ θεὸς καὶ τοῦ πρώτου καὶ ἑνὸς θεοῦ δημιουρός, ἐπιβλέψας τοῖς γενομένοις,
καὶ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ βούλησιν, τοῦτ’ ἐστιν τὸ ἀγαθόν, ἀντερείσας τῇ ἀταξίᾳ = Asclepius
73.23–29: ⲉⲣⲉϣⲁⲛⲁⲓ̈ ⲇⲉ ϣⲱⲡⲉ ⲱ̂ ⲁⲥⲕⲗⲏⲡⲓⲉ ⲧⲟⲧⲉ ⲡϫⲟⲉⲓⲥ ⲡⲉⲓⲱⲧ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡϣⲟⲣ̄ⲡ
ⲟⲩⲁⲁϥ· ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲡⲇⲏⲙⲓⲟⲩⲣⲅⲟⲥ ⲉⲁϥϭⲱϣ̄ⲧ ⲉϫ̄ⲛ ⲛⲉⲣϣⲱⲡⲉ· ⲁⲩⲱ ⲡⲉϥϣⲟϫⲛⲉ ⲉⲧⲉ ⲡⲁⲅⲁⲑⲟⲛ ⲡⲉ
ⲁϥⲥⲁϩⲱϥ ⲉⲣⲁⲧϥ̄ ⲉϫⲛ̄ ⲧⲁⲧⲁⲝⲓⲁ·
185
Disc. 8–9 61.19 and 62.4.
186
On the difficult Coptic, cf. Mahé, Hermès, 2:226.
187
Cf. Asclepius 37–38.
188
Cf. Bull, “Origenistic Adaptation.”
which it is necessary to lose all worldly possessions in order to avoid the

robbers and beasts that obstruct the road to the heavenly city with ten
gates. Granted, the remaining two texts, the Authoritative Discourse and
the excerpt from Plato’s Republic, are anonymous and thus lack such pri-
mordial revealers, but the former tells the story of the soul from the pri-
mordium to its present situation, whereas the latter is more of an appendix,
also dealing with the soul. It bears emphasizing that even though the Au-
thoritative Discourse and the Concept of Our Great Power are Christian
compositions, or at the very least have undergone Christian redaction, their
Christianity is unobtrusive.189 Indeed, the first person to report on the con-
tents of the codex, Jean Doresse, thought they were both Hermetic.190 On
this background Hermes was likely included as the local Egyptian, primor-
dial revealer, similar to that of Thunder: Perfect Mind, “whose image is
great in Egypt, and who has no image among the barbarians.”191 The narra-
tive framework in the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth and the Per-
fect Discourse is clearly in ancient times, and thus fit in with the primordi-
al history of the soul and the world in the Authoritative Discourse and the
Concept of Our Great Power.
That monks could have an interest in non-Christian primordial history is
demonstrated from the testimony of the Byzantine chronographer George
Syncellus concerning two of his sources, the Alexandrian monks Pano-
dorus and Annianus. 192 The former was a contemporary of Theophilus,
while the latter wrote his work a little later. Panodorus, in his chronogra-
189
George W. MacRae considered Auth. Disc. to be an unchristian text, and Francis
Williams suggests that the first stage of composition of the Great Pow. was written by a
Samaritan or Jewish Gnostic; cf. George W. MacRae, “A Nag Hammadi Tractate on the
Soul,” in Ex Orbe Religionum. Studia Geo Widengren oblata (ed. C. J. Bleeker et al.; 2
vols.; SHR 21–22; Leiden: Brill, 1972), 1:471–79; Francis E. Williams, Mental Percep-
tion: A commentary on NHC VI,4; The Concept of Our Great Power (NHMS 51; Leiden:
Brill, 2001). For critical rejoinders, cf. Michel Desjardins, “What can we learn from
Scholarship on The Concept of Our Great Power (CG VI, 4),” in Essays in Honour of
Frederik Wisse: Scholar, Churchman, Mentor (ed. Warren A. Kappeler; ARC 33; Mont-
réal: McGill University, 2005), 183–96, and Ulla Tervahauta, “A Story of the Soul’s
Journey in the Nag Hammadi Library: A Study of the Authentikos Logos (NHC VI,3),”
ThD. diss., University of Helsinki, 2013.
190
Jean Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics: An Introduction to the
Gnostic Coptic manuscripts discovered at Chenoboskion (New York: Viking Press,
1960), 241–48. Doresse counts five Hermetic treatises grouped together, apparently not
counting the excerpt from Plato’s Republic (not yet recognized as such at the time) as a
separate text.
191
Thund. 16.6–9: ⲁ̣[ⲛⲟⲕ] ⲡⲉⲧⲛⲁϣⲉ ⲡⲉⲥⲉⲓⲛⲉ ϩⲛ̄ ⲕⲏⲙⲉ ⲁⲩⲱ ⲧⲉⲧⲉ ⲙⲛ̄ⲧⲉⲥ ⲉⲓⲛⲉ ϩⲛ̄
ⲛ̄ⲃⲁⲣⲃⲁⲣⲟⲥ.
192
Cf. William Adler, Time Immemorial: Archaic History and Its Sources in Chris-
tian Chronography from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus (DOS 26; Washington,
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1989), 72ff.
phy, made use of a list of gods who ruled as kings over Egypt before the
flood.193 This list was ostensibly written in a sacred language by Thoth, the
first Hermes, before the flood, and rediscovered by Hermes Trismegistus
after the flood, who transcribed them with hieroglyphic characters in books
that he placed in the Egyptian temples. From there, they were ostensibly
presented by the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho to king Ptolemy II
Philadelphus.194 While Eusebius brushed away the reign of gods as fiction,
Panodorus used the list to demonstrate that the gods corresponded to the
antediluvian Enochic fallen angels. 195 It is also likely that Panodorus is
Syncellus’ source for a quote from Zosimus, which attributes the doctrine
of angels sleeping with human women to the Physika of Hermes, which is
explicitly made to correspond to the Enochic Book of Watchers.196 Pano-
dorus thus read Hermes as a primordial witness to the truth of the sacred
history of the Bible, and to some extent he harmonized Hermes with sacred
history.
It is possible that those who commissioned Codex VI had a similar idea.
For example, the Discourse on the Eighth and the Ninth could be seen to
illustrate the first nine gates of the heavenly city with ten gates in Acts of
Peter and the Twelve Apostles, thus placing the ultimate Christian reality
one level above that of Hermes. Something similar may be the case with
the eschatology of the Perfect Discourse, which we have seen was popular
among readers such as Lactantius and Augustine, and probably known to
Cyril. The future twilight of the gods of Egypt, so lamented by Hermes,
leads to cosmic disruptions that closely resemble those described by the
Concept of Our Great Power, when the second age of the soul is consumed
by fire, and the third age of the spirit emerges. Furthermore, there is a
strong reminiscence in the Authoritative Discourse – “the pagans know the
way to their temples of stone, which will perish, and they worship their
idol” 197 – to the eschaton of the Perfect Discourse in which “Egyptians
193
George Syncellus, Chronographia 18–9; Adler and Tuffin, Chronography, 24–25.
194
George Syncellus, Chronographia 41; Adler and Tuffin, Chronography, 54–55.
Scholars generarlly identify the Hermetic list as belonging to the Book of Sothis by pseu-
do-Manetho. I have argued that the list might be authentically Manethonian; cf. Bull,
“Tradition of Hermes,” 48–87.
195
Georg Syncellus, Chronographia 41–43; Adler and Tuffin, Chronography, 56–57.
Cf. Christian H. Bull, “Women, Angels, and Dangerous Knowledge: The Myth of the
Watchers in the Apocryphon of John and its Monastic Manuscript-Context,” in Women
and Knowledge in Early Christianity (ed. Ismo Dunderberg, Outi Lehtipuu, Ivan Mirosh-
nikov, and Ulla Tervahauta; VCSup; Leiden: Brill, 2017), forthcoming.
196
Georg Syncellus, Chronographia, 14; Adler and Tuffin, Chronography, 18. Cf.
Heinrich Gelzer, Sextus Julius Africanus und die byzantinische Chronographie (3 vols.;
Leipzig: Teubner, 1880–1898), 2:192 n. 1.
197
Auth. Disc. 34.13–15: ϫⲉ ⲛ̄ϩⲉⲑⲛⲟⲥ ⲅⲁⲣ ⲥⲉⲥⲟⲟⲩⲛ ⲛ̄ⲑⲓⲏ ⲛ̄ⲃⲱⲕ ⲉⲡⲟⲩⲣ̄ⲡⲉ ⲛ̄ⲱⲛⲉ ⲉⲧⲛⲁ-
ⲧⲁⲕⲟ ⲛ̄ⲥⲉⲟⲩⲱϣⲧ̄ ⲙ̄ⲡⲉⲩⲉⲓⲇⲱⲗⲟⲛ.
will turn out to have served the divine in vain,” Egypt “will no longer be
full of temples but of tombs,” and its “wondrous words are stone.”198 Also,
the Authoritative Discourse admits that pagans know that the God of heav-
en is above their idols, but they have not received the word.199 This in fact
corresponds quite closely to the Christian view of Hermes, although some
Christian authors also thought Hermes had knowledge of the word of God.
Beyond the texts in Codex VI, the apocalypse of Hermes would also
likely remind the reader of Isaiah’s oracle concerning Egypt: “Behold, the
Lord is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt; and the idols of Egypt
will tremble at his presence, and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within
them.” 200 The following list of calamities that will befall Egypt strongly
resembles that of the Perfect Discourse, which is derived from similar
chaos-descriptions in ancient Egyptian prophecies.201 This native prophetic
tradition is also used in the Apocalypse of Elijah, which was likely com-
posed in the third century, and was read in Coptic and Greek in Egyptian
monasteries in the fourth and fifth centuries.202
Finally, it is worth emphasizing again that at the time the Nag Hammadi
Codices were composed and read in the Thebaid there were likely still
people who followed the Way of Hermes in the close vicinity, in cities
such as Hermopolis, Panopolis, and Thebes. Papyrus Mimaut was likely
owned and read by Egyptian priest(s) and contains the same Hermetic
Prayer of Thanksgiving as the one in Codex VI, only in Greek and as part
of a spell to make the sun-god appear to the ritualist. Was there any con-
tact between the monastic readers of the Nag Hammadi Codices and the
pagan Hermetists, beyond a shared interest in Hermetic literature? We
have seen that a person like Zosimus was interested in the same kind of
literature as that found in the Nag Hammadi Codices, and it is possible that
he converted to Christianity at some point. If someone like Zosimus be-
came a Christian monk, would he bring his non-Christian books? An anec-
dote from the Apophthegmata patrum portrays a meeting between a monk
and a pagan Egyptian priest that has some verisimilitude, even if it is not
demonstrably historical:
198
Perf. Disc. 70.11–15: ⲁⲧⲥⲟⲟⲩⲛ ϫⲉ ⲟⲩⲛ̄ ⲟⲩⲟⲉⲓϣ ⲛⲁϣⲱⲡⲉ ⲛ̄ϩⲣⲁⲓ̈ ⲛ̄ϩⲏⲧϥ̄ ⲥⲉⲛⲁⲟⲩⲱⲛϩ̄
ⲉⲃⲟⲗ ⲛ̄ϭⲓ ⲛ̄ⲣⲙ̅ⲛ̅ⲕⲏⲙⲉ ⲉⲁⲩϩ͡ⲓⲥⲉ ⲉⲧⲙⲛ̅ⲧⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ ⲉⲡϫⲓⲛϫⲏ; 70.33–34: ⲟⲩⲕⲉⲧⲓ ⲥⲁⲙⲟⲩϩ ⲛ̄ⲣ̄ⲡⲉ ⲁⲗⲗⲁ
ⲥⲁⲙⲟⲩϩ ⲛ̄ⲧⲁⲫⲟⲥ; 71.3–4: ϩⲉ̣ⲛⲱⲛⲉ ⲛⲉ ⲛⲉⲕϣⲁϫⲉ ⲉⲧ̣[ⲉ] ⲛ̣̄ϣⲡⲏⲣⲉ.
199
Auth. Disc. 33.27–34.2.
200
Isa 19:1 LXX: Ἰδοὺ κύριος κάθηται ἐπὶ νεφέλης κούφης καὶ ἥξει εἰς Αἴγυπτον, καὶ
σεισθήσεται τὰ χειροποίητα Αἰγύπτου ἀπὸ προσώπου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἡ καρδία αὐτῶν
ἡττηθήσεται ἐν αὐτοῖς.
201
Mahé, Hermès, 2:68–113. Mahé makes no mention of Isa 19.
202
David Frankfurter, Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early
Egyptian Christianity (SAC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 21–23 on monastic mss; 67–
74 on Elijah as monastic ideal; 159–238 on traditional Egyptian Chaosbeschreibung.
Abba Olympius said this, ‘One of the pagan priests came down from Scetis one day and
came to my cell and slept there. Having reflected on the monks’ way of life, he said to
me, “Since you live like this, do you not receive any visions from your God?” I said to
him, “No.” Then the priest said to me, “Yet when we perform the rites to our God, he
hides nothing from us, but discloses his mysteries; and you, giving yourselves so much
hardship, vigils, prayer and asceticism, say that you see nothing? Truly, if you see noth-
ing, then it is because you have impure thoughts in your hearts, which separate you from
your God, and for this reason his mysteries are not revealed to you.” So I went to report
the priest’s words to the old men. They were filled with admiration and said this was
true. For impure thoughts separated God from man.’203
The saying testifies to an interest among monks in the visionary prowess

of Egyptian priests, although we cannot be certain if it circulated in Egypt
before the Apophthegmata were written down, probably during the first
half of the sixth century in Palestine.204 A vision similar to that described
by the pagan priest is gained by Hermes and his son in the Discourse on
the Eighth and the Ninth, when they “pray to God with all our mind and all
our heart and our soul,” saying: “We have walked in [your way and have]
renounced [evil] so the vision may come.”205 A monastic reader would be
likely to find such sentiments congenial, even if he did not share the pagan
prophet’s sense of loss over the departure of the old gods from Egypt, still
an on-going process at the time.
203
Ap. Patr. (PG 65) 313.36–52: Εἶπεν ὁ ἀββᾶς Ὀλύμπιος, ὅτι Κατέβη ποτὲ ἱερεὺς
τῶν Ἑλλήνων εἰς Σκῆτιν, καὶ ἦλθεν εἰς τὸ κελλίον μου, καὶ ἐκοιμήθη· καὶ θεασάμενος
τὴν διαγωγὴν τῶν μοναχῶν, λέγει μοι· Οὕτως διάγοντες, οὐδὲν θεωρεῖτε παρὰ τῷ Θεῷ
ὑμῶν; Καὶ λέγω αὐτῷ· Οὐχί. Καὶ λέγει μοι ὁ ἱερεύς· Τέως ἡμῶν ἱερουργούντων τῷ Θεῷ
ἡμῶν, οὐδὲν κρύπτει ἀφ’ ἡμῶν, ἀλλὰ ἀποκαλύπτει ἡμῖν τὰ μυστήρια αὐτοῦ· καὶ ὑμεῖς
τοσούτους κόπους ποιοῦντες, ἀγρυπνίας, ἡσυχίας καὶ ἀσκήσεις, λέγεις ὅτι Οὐδὲν
θεωροῦμεν; Πάντως οὖν, εἰ οὐδὲν θεωρεῖτε, λογισμοὺς πονηροὺς ἔχετε εἰς τὰς καρδίας
ὑμῶν, τοὺς χωρίζοντας ὑμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑμῶν, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ ἀποκαλύπτεται ὑμῖν
τὰ μυστήρια αὐτοῦ. Καὶ ἀπῆλθον, καὶ ἀνήγγειλα τοῖς γέρουσι τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ ἱερέως. Καὶ
ἐθαύμασαν, καὶ εἶπαν ὅτι οὕτως ἐστίν. Οἱ γὰρ ἀκάθαρτοι λογισμοὶ χωρίζουσι τὸν Θεὸν
ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. Trans. Benedicta Ward, Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabet-
ical Collection (Michican: Cistercian publications, 1975), 160. I have replaced Ward’s
imprecise “make a sacrifice” with “perform the rites” for ἱερουργούντων. Cf. Frankfur-
ter, Religion, 262.
204
Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Ho-
liness in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 86–88.
205
Disc. 8–9 55.10–14: ⲱ̂ ⲡⲁϣⲏⲣⲉ̣ ⲡⲉⲧⲉϣϣⲉ ⲡⲉ ϩⲙ̄ ⲡⲉⲛⲙ[ⲉ]ⲉⲩⲉ ⲧⲏⲣϥ̄ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲡⲉⲛϩⲏⲧ
ⲧⲏⲣϥ̄ ⲙⲛ̄ ⲧⲉⲛⲯⲩⲭⲏ ⲉⲧⲣⲉⲛϣⲗⲏⲗ ⲉⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ; 56.32–57.3: ⲁⲛⲙⲟⲟϣⲉ ⲅⲁⲣ ϩⲛ̄ [ⲧⲉⲕϩ︦ⲓⲏ ⲁⲩⲱ
ⲁⲛ]ⲕ̣ⲱ ⲛ̄ⲥⲱⲛ[ⲛ̄ⲧⲕⲁⲕⲓⲁ ⲉⲛ]ⲧ̣ⲣⲉⲥϣⲱⲡⲉ [ⲛ̄ϭⲓ] ⲧ̣ⲉ̣ⲑ̣[ⲉⲱ]ⲣ̣ⲓ̣ⲁ. The English edition has
ⲧ̣ⲉⲕ̣[ⲑⲉⲱ]ⲣ̣ⲓ̣ⲁ, with no reference to Mahé, yet from the facsimile it is clear that the letter
resembles a theta more than a kappa, and anyway there is not enough room for the inclu-
sion of a kappa. Even though this sentence is lacunose, it is clear also from the following
sentences that a vision is sought.
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Table of Contents

HUGO LUNDHAUG AND LANCE JENOTT

Part I: The Monastic Life

MELLISSA HARL SELLEW

Part II: Egyptian Christianity and its Literature

JULIO CESAR DIAS CHAVES

Part III: Religious Diversity in Egypt

Part IV: Scribes and Manuscripts

MICHAEL A. WILLIAMS AND DAVID COBLENTZ

List of Contributors ............................................................................... 491

ActIr Acta Iranica

CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

NHC Nag Hammadi Codex/Codices

SNTW Studies of the New Testament and Its World

Religious Diversity in Egypt

The scholarship on the Hermetic treatises in Nag Hammadi Codex VI has

could allegedly have had no interest in pagan writings such as those of

Hermetism in Fourth Century Egypt

Similar to the modern term Gnosticism, deriving from the adjective

term, but is used mostly sympathetically to designate “that which pertains

Egyptian Temples and their Statues

life of the cosmos, according to Hermes. I have elsewhere suggested that

Thoth and Hermopolis

temples. We know this from the papyri of Theophanes, a well-travelled

an philosopher Demetrius Cythras in the year 359 admitted to having of-

Panopolis: Ammon Scholasticus and Zosimus

be that Zosimus had read the prediction of Hermes, and perceived it to

dures. In the “Great Paris Magical Papyrus” (P. Bibliothèque nationale

hieroglyphic stele in his temple in Diospolis, probably referring to Di-

in secret writings.”96 The present tense indicates that Ammianus believes

The Christian Reception of Hermes

Hermetic astrological writings. Otherwise we have no testimonies of en-

Didymus the Blind

turned out to contain a number of biblical commentaries by Didymus.120

is lacking and gives way to participation in the good. Therefore, Didymus

Egyptians (Acts 7:22)” – as Didymus also reminds the reader elsewhere137

furthermore presents the myth of Osiris and Typhon as a political allegory

Despite his connection to initiatory rites and idolatrous temples, Hermes

from fifteen Hermetic books composed by an Egyptian living in Athens,159

Hermes in Nag Hammadi Codex VI

Instead it was argued that the texts may be interpreted as heresiological

conjectured, could have found little of use in unbiblical literature.172 Ste-

the eschatology of The Concept of Our Great Power.176 However, he over-

In a later article, Michael Williams with Lance Jenott again discusses

which it is necessary to lose all worldly possessions in order to avoid the

The saying testifies to an interest among monks in the visionary prowess

Gordon, Richard. “The Religious Anthropology of Late-Antique ‘High’ Magical Practice.”

Säve-Söderbergh, Torgny. “Holy Scriptures or Apologetic Documentations? The ‘Sitz im

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