THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

undoubtedly repressed and maintained a tenuous existence in these later centuries
before it, along with Christianity, was engulfed by the tide of Islam. 75
While the new Christian message broke from its Jewish roots permeating the
Roman state, Manichaean syncretism was, in a way, correctly identified by Diocletian
as a foreign doctrine whose message could properly be associated with the Persians,
the hereditary enemies of the Romans. The rise of Manichaeism resulted initially from
the active support given to Mani by the Persian state. In effect, the suppleness of the
Manichaean teachings allowed it to move through the mythological water-tables
beneath national boundaries. It was eventually thwarted in the West due to the efforts
of its great rival which effectively foiled any attempt by the Manichaeans to enlist the
support of the Roman state. Christian orthodoxy used precisely the same methods as
the Manichaeans and was in a far better position to do so insofar as it was not
perceived to be an alien creed during the later phases of its development. Egyptian
Manichaeism was left like a tidal pool once the high-water mark of Manichaeism in
the West receded.
Putting aside the hackneyed heresiologies and the too-often narrow polemics
of modern scholarship in order to view Manichaean texts upon their own merits, we
discover a movement that was at once efficiently organised, ultra-literate, and
extravagantly poetic. Manichaeism in Egypt, apart from demonstrating the openness
of the Manichaean missionaries to Egyptian religiosity, also indirectly affirms the
strong existence of Egyptian religious thought at the end of a vast era of religiophilosophical
self-determination. The mythopoeicising élan of the Manichaeans in
this regard bespeaks a sensitivity to a humanist universality not yet seen upon such a
grand trans-cultural stage. This last factor undoubtedly explains their survival in
Egypt for some seven centuries in increasingly hostile circumstances. By the fourth
century Egyptian Manichaeism had undoubtedly become more than the Egyptian sect
of the religionist Mani; by the tenth century it was surely the last repository of many
ancient autochthonic religious conceptions, indeed the last manifestation of Gnosis in
Egypt.
519. I am indebted to G. Stroumsa’s article, “Monachisme et Marranisme chez les
Manicheens d’Égypte,” Numen 2 (1982): 184-201, for this source and for the Annales of
Eutychius referred to above.
75
It is interesting that this date makes the Manichaeans in Egypt contemporaneous with
Priscilianism in northern Spain (and I note the legendary tradition attributed to Priscillian, of
a Manichaean master from Egypt, Marc of Memphis). The survival of the Manichaeans
beyond the fourth and fifth centuries in Egypt was undoubtedly due in part to their ability to
pose as Christians, meeting in secret to affirm the radical divergencies of their faith.