THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

according to Basileides, precludes all substance, all perspective, all subsequent being,
and therefore excludes everything in its very nature, including Intelligibility as we
know it: it is therefore ineffable. Yet out of this depth, this void, there arose a Will
which surfaced, gradually creating intelligibility and differentiation from an inchoate
and latent state.
Basileides’ very careful description of the almost blind and unconsciously
directed attributes of this Creator god, curiously anticipates Schopenhauer’s Will:
Absence of all aim, of all limits, belongs to the essential nature of the will in
itself, which is an endless striving. 17
Equally, the image comes directly from the ancient Egyptian view of the Primeval
Void, the inert depths of Nun wherein the osmotic Atum finally manages to overcome
his lassitude and create the ennead, very well described in Coffin Text 80:
While I was alone
with Nut in innertness
I could not find a place to stand or sit
before Heliopolis had been founded in which I could exist
before my throne was formed upon which I might sit
before I made Nut that she might dwell above me
that she might marry Geb
before the first had been born
before the Ennead had come into existence
that they might dwell with me
Atum said to Nun:
“I am upon the flood-waters and becoming very tired
and my patricans are inert....” 18
In Basileides we are witness to all the intellectual refinement we would expect
from an Alexandrian schooled in Greek thought, one who employs rhetorical schemes
and tropes in his writings if we are to take Hippolytus’ transcription at face value. 19
The conceptualisations and language employed are very much philosophical, and one
senses a sophisticated caution in the handling of words with which to convey a rather
abstruse line of thought: what is striking in this passage is the deconstruction of naïve
verbal realism and a focus upon the limitations of language. 20
Not so the author of
17
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. I, trans.E.F.J. Payne
(New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 164.
18
Hieroglyphic transcription from Adriaan de Buck, The Egyptian Coffin Texts, 33-34.
19
There is surely no reason not to given that the addition of the rhetorical scheme of anaphora
(which adds marked emphasis through repetition of opening phrases) for example, would
hardly have been added by Hippolytus who sought to denigrate.
20
The extended use of the oxymoron – the “master-trope of mysticism” – in The Thunder:
Perfect Mind demonstrates comparable sophistication to Basileides’ use of anaphora to cite
two examples out of many. A study of Gnostic rhetoric is acutely required in this field.
Gnostic texts were undoubtedly esoteric, intended to offer a way beyond the incipient
mendaciousness of human knowledge and therefore words – these factors suggest a