THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

are strong, and Fowden makes the important point that both the Thebes cache and the
Nag Hammadi corpus, “illustrate that interlocking of the technical and philosophical
approaches” that he traces in the Hermetica. 5
The magical papyri demonstrate the rise of a new religious worldview in
Egypt, one in which the underworld has gained in direful importance. One makes a
fundamental mistake in assuming that these documents only illustrate a debased
lowbrow mélange of ill-fitting pieces. Magical texts are no longer viewed as being a
sort of religious underworld in and of themselves; recent work in anthropology and
sociology views the phenomenon of magic as a modality of religious thought, one
which is to be situated on the continuous spectrum of religious experience 6
While
there is not yet a consensus on how magic is to be defined, A. Segal’s article
“Hellenistic Magic” ably details the hermeneutic pitfalls in the modern hierarchic
approach to the religious phenomenon of “magic”. 7
The magical papyri at once offer
us a direct glimpse into the transformational process that a segment of traditional
Egyptian theology was undergoing, in particular an enhancement of its own theurgic
propensities in a marked dualist worldview. The result of this, as I shall argue, is the
foundation of a religious impetus coterminous with Gnostic thought in Egypt. Hans
Dieter Betz, in the introduction to his translation of the Greek magical texts describes
their contents as follows:
Since the material comes from Graeco-Roman Egypt, it reflects an amazingly
broad religious and cultural pluralism. Not surprising is the strong influence of
Egyptian religion throughout the Greek magical papyri, although here the texts
show a great variety. Expressed in Greek, Demotic, or Coptic, some texts
represent simply Egyptian religion. In others the Egyptian element has been
transformed by Hellenistic religious concepts. Most of the texts are mixtures of
several religions – Egyptian, Greek, Jewish, to name the most important.... We
should make it clear, however, that this syncretism is more than a hodgepodge
of heterogeneous items. In effect, it is a new religion altogether, displaying
unified religious attitudes and beliefs. As an example, we may mention the
enormously important role of the gods and goddesses of the underworld. The
role of these underworld deities was not new to Egyptian religion or, to some
extent, to ancient Greek religion; but it is characteristic of the Hellenistic
syncretism of the Greek magical papyri that the netherworld and its deities had
become one of its most important concerns... The people whose religion is
reflected in the papyri agree that humanity is inescapably at the whim of the
forces of the universe. 8
im Erbe Ägyptens), while the magical texts presented by Betz “are mainly from the second
century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.” The Greek Magical Papyri, xli.
5
Fowden, Egyptian Hermes, 172.
6
See Christopher.A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink, Magika Hiera (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991), vi.
7
Alan Segal, “Hellenistic Magic,” in Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions, ed. R.
van den Broek and M.J. Vermaseren (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), 349-411.
8
Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri, xlv, xlvi, xlvii.