THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Ho all living upon the earth, and those who shall be young men someday! I
shall tell you the way of life.... Offer praises to the living Disk and you shall
have a prosperous life; say to him ‘Grant the ruler health exceedingly!’ and
then he shall double favours for you.... Adore the king [Akhenaten] who is
unique like the Disk, for there is none other beside him!
(Amarna inscription: Akhenaten) 47
A number of important features expressed here contain specific dualistic sentiments
and philosophical ideas. The sun is the abettor of life on earth, the foe of darkness, at
once a symbol and direct manifestation divine energies whose source is distant. This
essential dualism finds its basis in the long-standing Egyptian world-view and the
expression of it given here often aspires to the level of poetry.
The many parallels which exist between Egyptian Manichaean texts and New
Kingdom inscriptions clearly demonstrate surface similarities between the
heliocentrism of Akhenaten and Mani as he is depicted in the Coptic Kephalia. Both
saw themselves in a three-tiered cosmology in which they were in a position of direct
authority for humankind (for Akhenaten, the Aten priesthood and his chosen people
the Egyptians, for Mani his Elect and all humanity) beneath the visible presence of
god in the world: the sun-disk. Both saw themselves as the prophet of the sole god
who created himself daily in the form of the sun. The sun, for both, is the most
concentrated locus of divinity in the physical universe: to experience the sun’s rays
upon oneself was literally to feel the hand of God. Yet a differentiation is made
between the physical presence of the Sun and the realm of the Father which is quite
distant and invisible for humans. The Father gives to the Sun, and the Sun to the Great
Enlightener upon earth: Akhenaten/Mani, both of whom become the tangible focus of
the faith. When the higher divinity goes to rest, in both systems, the world becomes a
dark and hostile place, sleeping in the manner of death until the life-giving rays of the
sun appear again on the eastern horizon. Akhenaten and Mani take on the role of
spiritual suns in the physical darkness during this time, and the dawn defines the
prophet’s role upon earth as the executor of the overthrow of darkness. It is no
overstatement to stress these aspects of the two systems, although it must be added
that this core-theology can be somewhat obscured in Manichaeism given the intricate
convolutions of Mani’s entire pseudo-scientific system of thought. These similarities,
while interesting, do not argue any necessary historical connectedness; what they do
suggest, it seems to me, is the heliocentric donnée drawn upon in similar fashion by
two distinct groups of religionists in Egypt. The fact that the Manichaeans
accomplished this some 1500 years after the Atenists, in the last phases of Egyptian
autochthonic thought, bespeaks the powerful longevity of heliocentrism in the
Egyptian religious experience
Throughout Ptolemaic and Roman times the Egyptian priesthood had become
a repository for nationalist sentiment, their various leaders often existing as ethnarchs
among the populace At the time when the Manichaeans arrived in Egypt these priests
could still read the ancient texts and it is to be expected that the general mythological
view of the masses still drew upon their own venerable traditions via this learned
46
Aldred, Akhenaten:King of Egypt, 1.
47
Redford, Akhenaten the Heretic King, 181.