THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

III,3 & V,1), which can be dated to the first century B.C.E. 92
The most interesting
changes, from our perspective, would have occurred among the bilingualised
descendants of the priestly class who were made up in part of educated Greeks who
had crossed the cultural divide. We note in particular Hecataeus (c. 300 B.C.E.), a
pupil of the Skeptic Pyrrhon who, at a very early stage in Ptolemaic rule, provided a
powerful rhetorical impetus in aiding this transculturalisation although he could
hardly be called bilingualised. According to Diodorus, his work On the Egyptians was
divided into four sections: native cosmology and theology; geography of Egypt;
native rulers; and customs. In all this his main interest was in demonstrating the
antiquity and superiority of Egyptian culture and social institutions although the
accuracy of the details he passes along leave much to be desired. Even so, together
with Manetho, Hecataeus was instrumental in early Ptolemaic times in disseminating
Egyptian thought to the Greek world, and in abetting the worldly and comparativist
spirit of the Alexandrian age. 93
This group, existing in close proximity to the library
in Alexandria, 94
would then have facilitated the development of the “internationalist”
perspective imbuing the Gnostic temperament. The later anti-Roman sentiments of the
city would have enhanced their own anti-worldliness, and their anarchic temperament,
fundamentally Egyptian at this point with respect to foreign laws, 95
would have been
in perfect accord with the most anarchic ancient city of learning known in antiquity.
Gnostic libertinism, as well as asceticism, both arose from the bed of anarchist
temperament. 96
We shall have occasion to examine the growing link between
Alexandria and Memphis, in particular the hereditary high-priests there whose lineage
continued unbroken throughout the entire Ptolemaic era, and whose power was everincreasing.
Egyptian in their cultural heritage and ways of thinking, this group would
have been profoundly radicalised by their exposure to the diverse intellectual
developments in Alexandria, in particular Greek philosophical thought. The parallel
Gnostic interaction of Graeco-Egyptian elements resulted in a synergism, a fusion, far
more than a mere accumulation of disparate ideas. On the strength of a dualist
textuality manifest in the magical papyri, a widespread shift to dualistic world-views
92
This point is detailed in Chapter 7.
93
“Manetho testifies to the growth of an international spirit in the Alexandrine age.” Manetho,
vii.
94
Not necessarily in the city although one assumes that this would have naturally formed the
focus here. There is textual evidence to show that antiquarians in other Greek cities on the
Nile built up their libraries through buying, borrowing, and copying as one would expect.
There is one text which illustrates a bookseller’s list of books needed from Alexandria.
Requests here included the complete works of various philosophers, and one interesting
treatise, regrettably lost, entitled On the Uses of Parents Lewis, Life in Egypt Under Roman
Rule, 61.
95
This anarchism was not confined simply to the large cities, but extended into the rural areas
where peasants were driven to flee their homes by Roman taxes and liturgies. The large
scale refusal to work was also a common feature of the times. Ibid., 203-204.
96
Kurt Rudolf, Gnosis, trans. Robert McLachlan Wilson (Reprint;1977, San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1983), 255: “Evidently libertine and ascetic deductions were drawn from the
beginning, and more or less simultaneously, from the common “anarchistic” deposit, and
were practised with different degrees of intensity.”