THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

O god of gods, lord of the world, who have divided by your own divine spirit
the universe; first from the firstborn you appeared, created carefully from water
that’s turbulent 14
“The great god in the abyss” is a typical epithet and we find this further on in PGM
III.633-690, a passage which focuses upon Re and other figures on the sun-barque.
This text is written in Coptic and is to be tentatively dated to the first century C.E.. 15
In PGM IV, 1596-1715, the 12 passengers of Re’s sun-barque are identified as the 12hours
of the nights passage, each in turn depicted as a specific animal and Egyptian
god. R. Merkelbach and M. Totti see this as likely coming from an astrologicalmystical
book dating to the 2nd or 1st century B.C.E. 16
The motif of the attack by
Apophis upon the sun-barque also shows up in Coptic magical texts. 17
The figure of Maskelli is to be identified as Nun, 18
and this divine figure
appears in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia where he is also identified as Zarazaz (Book IV,
365.2) 19
. Various divine figures come forth from Nun and in fact Egyptian “I am he
who came forth from Nun” is written as a sacred incantation: PHIRIMNOUN
[A]NOX. 20
The function of Nun as the abyss which generates divinity is found in
Gnostic thought, as in this passage from On The Origin of the World:
Now the Aeon of Truth possesses no shadow within (and) it did not weaken, for
the immeasurable Light is everywhere within it. But its exterior is shadow
which is called Darkness, from which there appeared a Power presiding over the
Darkness. The Powers which thereafter came to be called the shadow “the
Chaos which has no beginning”. From it, each [genus] of the gods blossomed
upwards [.......] together with the entire world [so that] the shadow follows upon
the first Work. It was manifest [as] the Deep (Coptic NOYN) from within the
Pistis, about which we have spoken. (NHC II,5 98.25-99.2) 21
14
Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri, 32-33.
15
Christine Harrauer, Meliouchos: Studien zur Entwicklung religiöser Vortsellungen in
griechischen synkretistischen Zaubertexten (Wein: Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1987), 71.
16
Reinhold Merkelbach and Maria Totti, Abrasax: Ausgewählte Papyri Religiösen und
Magischen Inhalts, Band 1, Gebete (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag GmbH, 1990), 105.
17
William H. Worrell, “A Coptic Wizard’s Hoard,” AJSL 46 (1930): 261.
18
Harrauer, Meliouchos, 22 n.18.
19
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol.IX: Pistis Sophia, ed. R. McL. Wilson (Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1978), 730.
20
PGM XXI.25; Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri, 259.
21
Coptic transcription from NHS, vol.XXI: Nag Hammadi Codex II,2-7, ed. Bentley Layton
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989), 30. Alexander Böhlig, “Urzeit und Endzeit in der Titellosen
Schrift des Codex II von Nag Hammadi” in Mysterion und Wahrheit (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1968), 135-48, who otherwise notes the connections with Egypt in this text, but does not
draw any connection with Nun.