THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

idealiser of the Egyptian priestly way of life wrote, among a number of lost works, the
Hieroglyphica which was quite influential in late antiquity. 33
Chaeremon is important
in that he consciously facilitated the Graeco-Egyptian fusion we are concerned with,
this from within a more conservative scholarly class of priests. Against such literary
initiatives must be set the aforementioned Acts of the Pagan Martyrs, the
development of Gnostic thought, and various other rhetorical vehicles which gave
outlet to Egyptian nationalism and anti-Roman sentiment.
The hypothesis I advance is that this genuine cultural interaction inevitably
generated the appearance of the spoken Egyptian dialect of the time in Greek
characters, in Alexandria and Memphis in particular 34
, especially one already richly
embedded with Greek loan-words. The Greek mind, even “Egyptianised” to the extent
of ostensibly casting off the Greek mythos and embracing the Egyptian, would have
insisted upon this at some point for reasons of expediency, and the more liberal
Graeco-Egyptian magician and priest would have appreciated the facility with which
actual vowel sounds could be recorded, as a result readily moving away from the
archaic pronouncements, figuratively and literally, of Demotic.
In analysing the relationship between Demotic and Coptic, Kurt Sethe
concluded that, as with every phase of the Egyptian language, Demotic was
eventually left behind by the actual spoken language of the people, and perpetuated
within itself archaic forms. The seeds for the germination of Coptic have to do, in
part, with this lag between an older written script, and the newer spoken language. 35
Through extensive linguistic analyses Sethe, even in his day, was able to conclude
that Demotic is not to be considered a “divider” between Late Egyptian and Coptic;
likewise, Coptic cannot be depicted simply as a continuation of Demotic. There was a
complex inter-relationship between the three and Coptic should be viewed as a
parallel development to Demotic rather than as a clear successor. 36
A pivotal point is
made by Sethe at the beginning of his article:
Ptolemaic-early Roman Alexandria. The Stoic temperament naturally melded with civil
authority. The Tripartite Tractate, a later Gnostic text, clearly delimits this split: “They have
introduced other types (of explanation), some saying that those who exist have their being in
accordance with providence These are the people who observe the orderly movement and
foundation of creation. Others say that it is something alien. These are the people who
observe the diversity and lawlessness and the powers of evil.” Coptic transcription from
NHS, vol. XXVIII, 290.
33
van der Horst, Chaeremon, from the introduction.
34
An indirect affirmation of the prominence of Memphis in the Greek mind is perhaps to be
found in the etymology of the Greek αεγυπτοs, which came from an Egyptian name for
Memphis Hwt-k 3 -Pth, “Soul-Mansion of Ptah.” See Ricardo A. Caminos, Late-Egyptian
Miscellanies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 38, n.1,3.
35
See Sethe, “Das Verhältnis zwischen Demotisch und Koptisch und seine Lehren für die
Geschichte der ägyptische Sprache,” 300. Sethe’s main point is that this dynamic is far more
intense in a society which is mostly illiterate, wherein the perpetuation of the script is
effected by a relatively small group, predisposed for religious and political reasons to
entrench archaic forms.
36
Ibid., 301: “[Coptic] at its inception did not succeed Demotic but was a language which
independently arose from the same root [Late Egyptian], and was used simultaneously with
the Demotic language, being its sister not its daughter.”