THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Psenptaïs pointedly underlines the lengths the Greek kings went to involve themselves
in Egyptian religious practice and, equally, the rapport that the high priests of
Memphis had with the Greek king in Alexandria:
I went to the residence of the Greek kings on the shore of the sea west of Aqa
whose name is Rakotis [Alexandria]. The King of Upper and Lower Egypt,
Lord of the Two Lands, the god Philopater Philadelphus Neos-Dionysus,
coming forth from his palace alive and well, arrived at the temple of Isis,
mistress of the Iat-Oudjat. He made many and great offerings to her. Leaving
the temple of Isis upon his chariot, the king himself stopped his chariot. He put
on my head a beautiful crown of gold with all sorts of genuine and precious
stones with (?) a heart of the king in the midst of it. I was named his prophet. He
issued a royal edict to the towns and nomes saying: “I have made the great
Chief of workers Psenptaïs, true of voice, my prophet”(BM 886 [1026]). 41
It is here that an important precondition for the rise of Gnostic thought was
created, for the group in the vanguard of Petubastis was fluent in Greek, literally “the
language of power” of the time, as well as Egyptian. The evolution of spoken Coptic,
with its liberal use of Greek loan-words, is the natural result one would expect. The
development of this verbal phenomenon into a written medium employing the Greek
alphabet was a natural consequence, one that shall be examined more closely in
Chapter 6. Complete bilingualism provided the basis for a subsequent fusion of Greek
and Egyptian philosophical and religious thought among a group that was already
predisposed to take up these matters. 42
We know very little about Egyptian religious life in Alexandria in this
period, 43
but we may surmise that it was active as the Egyptians also had their own
law courts. 44
For the Greeks, apart from the above-mentioned cult of Sarapis, there
was a dynastic cult centred upon the body of Alexander. 45
A syncretism of Dionysus-
Underworld-Osiris was made, and Bast was associated with Artemis by the Greeks.
There is evidence that the Persian religion of Ahura-Mazda gained some footing in
41
Charles Maystre, Les grands prêtres de Ptah de Memphis, 412.
42
See François Dunand, “Les Syncrétismes dans la Religion de l’Égypte Romaine”, in Les
syncrétismes dans les religions de l’antiquité, ed. François Dunand and P. Lévêque (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1975), 152-85, where the earlier Ptolemaic dynamics are also discussed.
43
Fraser, predictably, concludes that there was therefore “a lack of religious activity,”
(Ptolemaic Alexandria, 189), this because the site was not associated with a particular god.
There is, however, some evidence that a fort was established on the site by Ramses III
around 1500 B.C.E., and there may have been a shrine to Isis upon Rakotis hill before the
arrival of Alexander; in any event, there is no evidence to suggest that the site was viewed
by Egyptians as being on foreign soil, much as they detested Alexandria at times. Quite apart
from this, it is unlikely in the extreme that with all the evidence we have of Egyptian cultural
tenacity, that the Egyptian population existed in Alexandria as deculturalized drones as
Fraser would suggest.
44
Ibid., 54.
45
The body of Alexander was “kidnapped” by Ptolemy on route from Babylonia to
Macedonia, and brought to “his” city. This was a shrewd move intended to legitimate the
city in Egyptian eyes as the pharaonic centre of power in Egypt. In the event, this was only
minimally successful.