THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

were intermarrying with Egyptian women in particular from earliest times 6
; certainly
by the second century of Lagid rule this was a widespread social phenomenon.
Egyptian culture can be said to have almost literally seduced the Greek from the
outset. 7
This “seduction”, as we shall see, pertains to far more than the phenomenon
of intermarriage; even so, it is the mingling of blood-lines which creates the real
possibility for a more complete cultural fusion. This was a sociological dynamic that
Alexander attempted to apply as the bonding agent for his far-flung empire. It is
ironic that in Egypt at least, it sowed the seeds for eventual Ptolemaic dissolution. In
this chapter it is our critical task to understand this many-nuanced process of
Egyptianisation, both for purposes of historically and socially contextualising the
preconditions for the rise of Gnostic sects in Egypt, but also to understand the
characteristic Egypto-Hellenistic intertextuality of many Gnostic texts as having their
roots in the Ptolemaic period.
The sporadic Greek contempt for Egypt had always been tempered by a sense
of awe for the antiquity of this neighbouring culture; while Strabo thought the
Egyptians were hot-tempered and hostile to foreigners, Polybius was impressed by the
civility of the Alexandrians. The Egyptians for their part despised all foreigners, most
notably the Persians who had subjugated the country (not without tremendous
resistance at times) from 525 to 332 B.C.E. It should be emphasised here that the
Greek influence was already manifest long before Alexander’s arrival in Egypt; the
Ptolemaic era was to intensify this cultural interaction greatly. 8
This general
antipathy towards foreigners however, was always mitigated amongst an everwidening
group of Egyptians who interacted with the Greeks, and especially those
who learned the Greek language. Above all, the arrival of Alexander set in motion a
more ambivalent attitude among the Egyptians, for their earlier resistance to foreign
domination had been essentially religious and their extreme hatred for the Persians
facilitated Alexander’s victory. Alexander’s retinue included the Egyptian
city was thoroughly Greek in its earliest phases. While a gulf likely existed between the
ruling Macedonians and the Egyptian man on the street, the question is whether this split
existed from top to bottom in the social hierarchy. Fraser’s argument is based upon the
silence of the sources in the first instance(Ptolemaic Egypt, 70), and upon an implicitly
orientalist view of the Egyptians in Alexandria.
6
Eddy, The King is Dead, 313, points out that intermarriage was initially banned in the Greek
cities (Alexandria, Naukratis, and Ptolemais), but that the trend developed from the middle
of the third century onward (an interesting development considering Alexander’s own
insistence that intermarriage take place).
7
Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilisation and the Jews, 20, makes the point that although Greek
settlement in early Ptolemaic times was significant, it didn’t really have a chance against the
seven million indigenous Egyptians; that, mainly through intermarriage, the process of
Egyptianization proceeded unchecked: “for the soldiers married women of the local
population, and with the women Egyptian names, language, religion and customs entered
into their family life. The children of such mixed families normally followed the mother.” It
is also to be noted that Greek women had absolutely no say in the choice of husband (at least
where hereditary rights were concerned) and that, therefore, the phenomenon of
intermarriage between Greek women and native Egyptian men must have been rare.
Egyptian women, for their part, had the choice. See Alan B Lloyd, “The Late Period,”in
Ancient Egypt:A Social History, 311-14.
8
Morenz, Egyptian Religion,.244.