THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

“poetic metaphysics” (Harold Bloom), the Gnostic devaluation of any stated “real”
objectivised historical Sitz as anticipating modern phenomenology (Edmund Husserl),
a concern with a social hegemony at work in discourse that bids us keep the
political/sexual “heat” of the historical motive alive in textual exegesis (Antonio
Gramsci), the possibility of translation from one textual-setting to another (George
Steiner), and finally Literature’s larger concern with radical evil (Georges Bataille),
all of these “modern” concerns can and should be taken to Gnostic texts. Indeed, the
existence of the Skeptical schools in Alexandria at the time, and the implicitly Gnostic
“deconstructionist” approach to the Word, fairly compel us to not only return fullcircle
with respect to our own modern hermeneutic agenda, but to more fully
acknowledge the texts from the time period and place in which “hermeneutics” first
surfaced. This literary-critical optic forms the natural end-point of this study although
I am of necessity unable to give this vast undertaking anywhere near its full due.
Indeed, the overall scope I have set for myself might be considered
excessively broad were it not for the fact that the system of movements before us all
extend out from a central historical and mythological axis. The “historical” I speak of
here is more specifically existential and arises, quite simply, from the human
experience of evil in historical processes; the mythological refers to all texts that
detail an emanationist structure underlying their divine pantheon or philosophical
metaphysic. In this discussion I am enfranchising the much-maligned notion of the
“mythological” to connote ideas of philosophical and theological consequence and
merit. In dealing with the Gnostics and the Manichaeans in Egypt I am mainly
concerned with the presence of an autochthonic Egyptian textuality, as well as a social
history to support it; the backdrop of the Gnostic and Manichaean movement at large
will only be peripherally examined. Likewise, Middle Platonic and Hermetic thought
are culled for Egyptian and specifically dualist content. The Gnostic movement is the
main focus here and it is within the boundaries of their emanationist theogonies that I
propose to establish Egyptian precursors.
Finally, the Oriental backdrop against which an identifiably Greek mode of
ratiocination operated must be examined, for amongst an array of ancient
civilisations, the Babylonian, Persian, Syrian, Jewish, and Egyptian, all is pertinent,
but pride of place must go to Egypt. The Egyptian influence upon Greek thought,
commenced with the importation of Greek mercenaries by Psammetichus I (664-10
B.C.E.) who allowed Greek settlements and set up a scribal school, 33
reaching its high
point in Ptolemaic Alexandria in the last centuries before our era when the
Egyptianisation of the Greek settlers was proceeding apace 34
As well, we are able to
trace the clear precursors of Gnostic and Middle Platonic thought in this locus as in no
other. Greek, Coptic, and Demotic magical papyri all exhibit a wide-spread shift in
mood towards dualistic cosmologies just prior to and during the earliest stages of
Roman rule in Egypt. Towards the beginning of this period (200 B.C.E. to 400 C.E.)
Coptic was developed in the rough, likely for business documentation as well as the
translation of religious texts by a bilingual Graeco-Egyptian literati.
The philosophical and historical thesis I advance is that the root emanationist
metaphysic found in a large number of Hellenistic explorations of Gnosis can be
traced far back to the Egyptian Memphite, Hermopolitan, and Heliopolitan theologies
33
John Boardman, The Greeks Overseas (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books), 131.
34
See Naphtali Lewis, Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt Case Studies in the Social History of the
Hellenistic World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
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