THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Dionysios, son of Kephalas, lived in the last decades of the second century
B.C.E. The Egyptian element in his family had been prominent from much earlier and
he had been given the benefit of a bilingual upbringing. As a result he wrote Greek
and Demotic as well as any scribe of the time, and his family took great pride in
keeping their Greek names, although they used their Egyptian names and spoke the
Egyptian language inter familia. Dionysios served in the military of the Ptolemaic
state (as did his father, hence his possessing that privilege), yet also held a priestly
office in the cult of the local ibis-god. This example illustrates a quite remarkable
degree of Graeco-Egyptian cultural interpenetration, one endemic to the latter half of
the Ptolemaic era. From this point on, with some certainty, we can look to
bilingualised strata made up of literate Graeco-Egyptians and bilingual Egyptians,
primarily in Alexandria and Memphis, for the wherewithal and essentially religious
motives to develop a systematic Coptic script. 21
The fact that Dionysios held an Egyptian priestly office is significant. Unlike
the Egyptians, at least in Ptolemaic times, the Greeks had never developed a priestly
class. We recall Kahle’s hypothesis that the formulation of Coptic arose out of an
“urgent need” to clarify passages in Coptic, especially to effect an accurate
transliteration of sacred sounds – a quintessentially Egyptian religious concern now
manifested in a bilingual environment. Dionysios’ case, and other similar ones that we
possess, is significant not just in demonstrating the complete level of bilingualisation
attained by Egyptians of Greek descent in this time period: most significantly, it
vividly confirms what we know from other sources – that a significant number of
Greek descendants were ‘Egyptianised’ through their Egyptian wives and through a
genuine and active participation in Egyptian religion.
Following Kahle I would postulate that Coptic arose to some extent out of the
esoteric needs of a relatively small Graeco-Egyptian social class which was more
concerned with religious than mundane matters, a class perhaps more scholarly and
esoteric in their interests than that represented by Dionysios, and one which is to be
associated with Lower Egypt, particularly in Alexandria and Memphis. 22
Alongside
this development there is the more widespread need in the civil service of the times to
translate Egyptian into Greek characters for administrative purposes. It is clear that at
its inception Coptic would have been developed by bilingual Egyptians who wrote in
both Greek and Demotic scripts and whose minds were open to Greek culture. 23
We
21
Pace Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria. Fraser concludes that among the Egyptians in
Alexandria there was “a lack of religious activity” (189) in this period because the site was
not associated with a particular god. There is, however, some evidence that a fort was
established on the site by Ramses III around 1500 B.C.E., and there may have been a shrine
to Isis upon Rakotis hill before the arrival of Alexander; in any event, there is no evidence to
suggest that the site was viewed by Egyptians as being on foreign soil, much as they
detested Alexandria at times. Quite apart from this, it is unlikely in the extreme that, with all
the evidence we have of Egyptian cultural/religious tenacity, the Egyptian population of
Alexandria existed as deculturalised drones as Fraser seems to suggest.
22
See Kákosy, “Gnosis und Ägyptische Religion,” in which the association of Gnosis with
Alexandria is seen to extend back into the earliest period of Gnostic studies. “In this time
Alexandria is not only the stronghold of Greek culture and knowledge, it is especially an
international centre, in which oriental religions also played an important role,” 238.
23
Philippe Derchain, “Miettes: Homère à Edfou,” RdÉ 26 (1974): §3, 15-19, who notes the
allusions to the Illiad made in a myth of Horus by a hierogrammate in late Ptolemaic times,