THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

The nhh/dt split shows up in Hermetic texts, as in the Poimandres, the most
Gnostic of all, wherein the teacher imparts the traditional view of nhh and dt, of
mortal time and immortal time:
That is why man, unlike all the living things on earth, is twofold: mortal
because of the body, immortal because of the essential Man. For he who is
immortal and has authority over all things experiences mortality, being subject
to fate. He who is up above the Harmony (of the spheres) has become a slave
inside the Harmony. 33
The Hermetic Asclepius, one version of which surfaced in the Nag Hammadi corpus,
also demonstrates this division and need not be delved into here. 34
We have examined the role of Horus in Egyptian myth, and his heuristic
appropriation within Gnostic systems as the limit or boundary between the Pleroma
and the lower world. An inscription at Dendara describes his position in terms of
fusing the higher dt realm with the lower nhh in the epithet, “he who unites together
nhh-eternity and dt-eternity”. 35
Likewise, an inscription from Edfu depicts the same
fusion: “nhh-eternity is in his right eye, dt-eternity is in his left eye”. 36
The Gnostic embodiment of nhh is to be found in their conception of aeons
(the modern Latin spelling from the Greek aion) which manifest discrete periods of
Pleromic or theogonic epochs. The Pleroma itself is dt-eternal and is therefore “all
things at once”, often referred to as “the aeon of aeons” in various tractates, as in The
Trimorphic Protennoia for example: “and the Aeon of Aeons looked upon the Aeons
he gave birth to” (38.26-27). 37
The Gospel of the Egyptians depicts a typical Atumfigure
at the head of the gods who generates a triad from out of himself. The Coptic is
included here as my translation differs substantially from the Leiden, Brill edition
from whence the Coptic text is taken: 38
passage, heaven and underworld books, dead and magical texts. When we base our research
on these rich materials, they afford us in every instance a conceivable and solid basis; as
well, in confronting these texts we must keep in mind that they do not originate with the
knowledge of the Egyptian “man on the street”, but with the knowledge of the ‘Weltbild-
Spezialisten’, the priests”(47).
33
Corp. Herm. I.15, trans. Foerster, Gnosis: A Selection of Gnostic Texts, vol. 1, 331.
34
See Iverson, Egyptian and Hermetic Doctrine, 34 in which the Asclepius is discussed in
terms of the nhh-dt division.
35
Otto, Gott und Mensch, 92 (LD Text II 211).
36
Ibid., 93 (V48).
37
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol. XXVIII, 408.
38
Nag Hammadi Codices III, 2 and IV, 2: The Gospel of the Egyptians, trans. Böhlig and
Wisse, 53, 55. Their translation: “...the eternal light of the eternities, which has come forth,
of the ineffable and unmarked and unproclaimable Father, the aeon of the aeons, he who
begets himself, and he who comes forth from himself, and the alien one, the uninterpretable
power of the ineffable Father. Three powers come forth from him....” does not appear to be
cognizant of the relative present .