THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Forever for your Ka, everlastingly (dt) 27
His Majesty is Horus upon the throne of the Child, forever (nhh) and ever (dt).
Protect the son of Re, Ptolemy, forever (dt) 28
Gnostic Texts, and Coptic texts in general invariably use sha enech or some
Greek loan word as dt seems to have disappeared. 29
However, the distinction
remained, and the Gnostics were anti nhh-time as it was viewed to be a false
demiurgic “eternity” as opposed to the dt female aeon Sophia. Consider the following
description by Irenaeus of the Valentinian view of demiurgic time:
When the Demiurge further wanted to imitate also the boundless, eternal,
infinite and timeless nature of the upper Ogdoad (the original eight Aeons in the
Pleroma), but could not express their immutable eternity, being as he was the
fruit of defect, he embodied their eternity in time, epochs, and great numbers of
years, under the delusion that by the quantity of times he could represent their
infinity. Thus truth escaped him and followed the lie. Therefore his world shall
pass away when the times are fulfilled. (Adv. Haer. I.17.2) 30
Here we have a clear distinction drawn between a false nhh eternity – one usually
bound up with demiurgic hubris in not admitting to the higher powers of eternity, and
associated in Hellenistic times with the vicissitudes of Fate – and a distilled dt
eternity commonly associated with female Wisdom figures in Gnostic thought. These
are derived from various Isis, Tefnut, Hathor and Maat religious appreciations, in this
case more specifically derived from the Heh-gods. One is at first puzzled by this, for
the Heh-gods literally contain nhh-eternity in their names as a comparison between
Heh and nhh illustrate; however, the Heh-gods are seen to combine
the eternities of both dt and nhh, occupying a realm midway between heaven and
earth. 31
The above passage by Irenaeus suggests a view of time put forward by Plato in
the Timaeus; however, the nhh/dt bipolar view of time predates Plato by thousands of
years, and Plato can be seen to have appropriated a concept that was very widespread
among Egyptian priestly circles in his early visits to Egypt. 32
27
Ibid., 80.
28
Ibid., 80-81.
29
I have been unable to trace its development in the Wörterbuch, in Cerný, Coptic
Etymological Dictionary, or Crum, Coptic Dictionary.
30
Anti-Nicene Fathers, vol.1, 342-43.
31
Barta, “Die Bedeutung der Personifikation Huh im Untersheid zu den Personifikation Hah
und Nun,” 7.
32
Jan Assmann, in Stein und Zeit: Mensch und Gesellshaft im alten Ägypten (München:
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1991) describes this theology of time: “That is the sun-theology in
Egypt, grounded in the temple in Heliopolis, the same temple from which the tradition
followed Plato, himself initiated there into Egyptian wisdom. With no other ancient
Egyptian theology are we as well-informed as with these, which are found in their thousands
of deposits, above all hymns, but also tractates, cosmographical writings of the sun’s