THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

We are of necessity examining mythological conceptions of philosophical
consequence and it is no longer appropriate to regard Egyptian “myth” as lacking in
philosophical merit, or of historiographical value for that matter, although the texts we
are to examine were of course not generated with either of these formal aims in mind.
The battle to have Egyptian thought appreciated philosophically has been fought and
won within Egyptology proper, but it still bears re-emphasising. “Myth became
‘myth’ only when philosophy had arrived” as J. Mansfeld puts it 14
, and the
philosophical consequences of myth are forever being pulled out in hindsight, as with
the famous philosophical rediscovery of Gnostic thought by Hans Jonas, following the
religionsgeschichtliche Schule of the great nineteenth century German philologists,
although Schopenhauer’s rediscovery of Indian philosophy is perhaps the best
precedent to note. This process is currently in mid-stride within Egyptology. 15
Erik
Hornung draws upon the 19th century German philosopher F.W. Schelling at the
beginning of his work, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the
Many. 16
From Schelling’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Myth, Hornung quotes
the following passage: “they [the Egyptian gods] cannot be dismissed with a simple
pronouncement of distaste; detestable or not, they exist, and since they exist they must
be explained”. 17
The obvious significance of this passage quite simply is that
Schelling, as a philosopher, took Egyptian thought quite seriously, and Hornung uses
this as an overture to his study. 18
Siegfried Morenz establishes an essential point with
respect to Egyptian philosophy:
14
J. Mansfield. “Bad World and Demiurge: A ‘Gnostic’ Motif from Parmenides and
Empedocles to Lucretius and Philo,” in Studies in Gnosticisn and Hellenistic Religions, ed.
R. van den Broek and M.J. Vermaseren (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), 262.
15
Writing two decades ago, J. Gwyn Griffiths illustrates the tendency to compare the two in
terms of results, in this case the likelihood that the Presocratic Thales based his philosophy
upon the ancient Egyptian mythological figure of Nun, “deriving it from mythology, he
applied it in a sense which pioneered a philosophical, as opposed to a mythological point of
view,” from Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970), 428.
This said, the assumption that real philosophy is essentially about modes of argumentation is
simply wrong, even if this is in fact standard fare in Philosophy departments these days –
Philosophy is about insight. As a recent study on Schopenhauer observes: “It cannot be the
case that what is most important about what a philosopher has to convey to us is introduced
by his arguments, unless his problems are primarily technical ones of logic: it must already
lie in the insights, judgements, perceptions, points of view, choices, formulations and so on
that stock his premisses.” Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1983; reprint,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 39. That Philosophy and Mythology often proceed
and concern themselves with the same insights need hardly be argued.
16
Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, 16-17.
17
F.W.J. Schelling, Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythology, Zweite Abtheilung I (1856;
reprint, Darmstadt 1957), 24. Schelling was reacting to a line of Goethe’s in which he spoke
of “extolling dog-headed gods”.
18
Hornung’s mention of Schelling is not at all surprising for his later philosophy drew upon
the writings of Jakob Boehme whose mystical writings were an obvious influence upon
Schelling. See F.W. Schelling, Philosophical Enquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom,
trans. James Gutman (1809; reprint, La Salle, IL: Columbia University Press, 1986). It is
also interesting to consider that Boehme was advancing a quintessentially gnostic concern