Hermes the Egyptian

the impact of Ancient Egypt on Greek Philosophy
against Hellenocentrism, against Afrocentrism
in defence of the Greek Miracle

Section 1
the influence of Egyptian thought on 
Thales, Anaximander & Pythagoras

Section 2
Alexandro-Egyptian Hellenism & Hermetism

by Wim van den Dungen

Introduction

Section 1
the influence of Egyptian thought on 
Thales, Anaximander & Pythagoras

1 Egypt between the end of the New Kingdom and the rise of Naukratis.

• 1.1 The political situation in the Third Intermediate Period.

• 1.2 A few remarks concerning the Late Period.

• 1.3 Greek trade, recontacting & settling in Egypt.

2 Greece before Pharaoh Amasis.

• 2.1 Short history of Ancient Greece.

• 2.2 The invention of the "phoinikeïa" for both vowels & consonants.

• 2.3 Archaic Greek literature, religion & architecture.

3 Memphite thought and the birth of Greek philosophy.

• 3.1 The origin of Greek philosophy : Thales, Anaximander & the colonizations.

• 3.2 The Stela of Pharaoh Shabaka and Greek philosophy.

• 3.3 Pythagoras of Samos : the mystery of the holy & sacred decad.

• 3.4 The Greek pyramidion or the completion of Ancient thought.

Section 2
Alexandro-Egyptian Hellenism & Hermetism

4 The Greeks in Egypt.

• 4.1 Egyptian civilization after the New Kingdom.

• 4.2 The Ptolemaic Empire

• 4.3 Elements of the pattern of exchange between Egyptian and Greek culture.

• 4.4 Religious syncretism & stellar fatalism.

5 The Alexandrian "religio mentis" called "Hermetism".

• 5.1 Formative elements of Hermetism.

• 5.2 "Nous" and the Hellenization of the divine triads.

• 5.3 The influence of Alexandrian Hermetism.

• 5.4 Crucial differences between Hermes and Christ.

1. Egypt between the end of the New Kingdom and the rise of Naukratis.

1.1 The political situation in the Third Intermediate Period.

• Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1075 - 664 BCE) : Dynasties XXI - XXV

• Late Period (664 BCE - 332 BCE) : Dynasties XXVI - XXX

• Ptolemaic Period (305 - 30 BCE)

• Roman & Byzantine Period (30 BCE - 642 CE)

The "golden" New Kingdom ended (ca.1075 BCE) with a weak Pharaoh. Politically, we witness a clear division between the North (Tanis) and the South (Thebes). Theologically, "Amun is king" ruled, and so Egypt was a theocracy (headed by the military). In the period which followed, the Third Intermediate Period (ca. 1075 - 664 BCE), Nubia and the eastern desert were lost again (as well as the northern "Asiatic" regions). At the end of this period and for the first time since 3000 BCE, Egypt lost its independence.

The last Pharaoh of the New Kingdom, Ramesses XI (ca. 1104 -1075 BCE) had been unable to halt the internal collapse of the kingdom, which had already filled the relatively long reign of Ramesses IX (ca. 1127 - 1108 BCE). Tomb robberies (in the Theban necropolis) were now discovered at Karnak. Famine, conflicts and military dictatorship were the outcome of this degeneration. With the death of Ramesses XI, the "golden age" of Ancient Egyptian civilization had formally come to a close.

Dynasty XXI, founded by Pharaoh Smendes (ca. 1075 - 1044 BCE), formally maintained the unity of the Two Lands. But his origins are obscure. He was related by marriage to the royal family. In the North (Tanis) as well as in Thebes, Amun theology reigned (the name of Amun was even written in a cartouche), but in practice, the Thebaid was ruled by the high priest of Amun. The daughter of Psusennes I (ca. 1040 - 990 BCE), called Maatkare, was the first "Divine Adoratice" or "god's wife", i.e. the spouse of Amun-Re, the "king of the gods". She inaugurated a "Dynasty" of 12 Divine Adoratices, ruling the "domain of the Divine Adoratrice" at Thebes, until the Persian invision of 525 BCE.

From the XXIII Dynasty onward, the status of the "god's wife" began to approach that of Pharaoh himself, and in the XXVth Dynasty these woman appeared in greater prominence on monuments, with their names written in royal cartouches. They could even celebrate the Sed-festival, only attested for Pharaoh ! All this points to a radically changed conception of kingship, which became a political function (safeguarding unity) deprived of its former "religious" grandure and importance (Pharaoh as "son of Re", living in Maat). Indeed, all was in the hands of Amun and Amun's wife was able to divine the god's wish and will ...

Stone sculpture on a grand scale was rare. But work of unparalleled beauty & excellence was made on a modest scale (metal, faience). But in the North (Tanis), matter were not univocal either. Libyan tribal chieftains had been indispensable to the the Tanite kings, but with Pharaoh Psusennes II (ca. 960 - 945 BCE), they lost their power to them ... 

With Dynasty XXII ("Bubastids" or "Libyan"), founded by the Libyan Shoshenq I (ca. 945 - 924 BCE), Egypt came under the rule of its former "Aziatic" enemies. However, these Libyans had been assimilating Egyptian culture and customs for already several generations now, and so the royal house of Bubastid did not differ much from native Egyptian kingship, although Thebes hesitated. After the reign of Osorkon II (ca. 874 - 850 BCE), a steady decline set in. In Dynasty XXIII (ca. 818 - 715 BCE), the house of Bubastids split into two branches.

In the middle of the 8th century BCE, a new political power appeared in the extreme South. It had for some generations been building up an important kingdom from their center at Napata at the 4th cataract. These "Ethiopians" (actually Upper Nubians) felt to be Egyptians in culture and religion (they worshipped Amun and had strong ties with Thebes). The first king of this Kushite kingdom was Kashta, who initiated Dynasty XXV, or "Ethiopian", characterized by the revival of archaic Old Kingdom forms (cf. Shabaka Stone) and the return of the traditional funerary practices. Indeed, because they possessed the gold-reserves of Nubia, they were able to adorn empoverished Egypt with formidable wealth.

Piye (ca. 740 - 713 BCE), probably Kashta's eldest son, was crowned in the temple of Amun at Gebel Barkal (the traditional frontier between Upper Egypt and Lower Nubia), as "Horus, Mighty Bull, arising in Napata". He went to Thebes to be acknowledged there. After having consolidated his position in Upper Egypt, Piye returned to Napata (cf. "Victory Stela" at Gebel Barkal). 

At the same time, in Lower Egypt, a future opponent, the Libyan Tefnakhte ruled the entire western Delta, with as capital Sais (city of the goddess Neit, one of the patrons of kingship). Near Sais were also the cities of Pe and Dep (Buto), of mythological importance since the earliest periods of Egyptian history, and cult centre of the serpent goddess Wadjet, the Uræus protecting Pharaoh's forehead. When the rulers of Thebes asked for help, Piye's armies moved northwards. When he sent messengers ahead to Memphis with offers of peace, they closed the gates for him and sent out an army against him. Piye returned victoriously to Napata, contenting himself with the formal recognition of his power over Egypt, and never went to Egypt again. But the anarchic disunity of the many petty Delta states remained unchanged.

Pharaoh Shabaka (ca. 712 - 698 BC), this black African "Ethiopian", also a son of Kashta, was the first Kushite king to reunite Egypt by defeating the monarchy of Sais and establishing himself in Egypt. Shabaka, who figures in Graeco-Roman sources as a semi-legendary figure, settled the renewed conflicts between Kush and Sais and was crowned Pharaoh in Egypt, with his Residence and new seat of government in Memphis. Pharaoh Shabaka modelled himself and his rule upon the Old Kingdom.

The first Assyrian king who turned against Egypt -that had so often supported the small states of Palestine against this powerful new world order- was Esarhaddon (ca. 681 - 669 BCE). For him, the Delta states were natural allies, for -in his view- they had reluctantly accepted the rule of the Ethiopians. Between 667 and 666 BCE, his successor Assurbanipal conquered Egypt (Thebes was sacked in 663 BCE) and this Assyrian king placed Pharaoh Necho I (ca. 672 - 664) on the throne of Egypt. With him, the Late Period was initiated.

► Conclusion :

In the Third Intermediate Period, or post-Imperial Era, we witness the decentralization of Egypt, and the reemergence of new divisions, either between Tanis and Thebes or between Sais and Napata. After the XXIth Dynasty, the former "enemies of Egypt" ruled, i.e. the Libyans and Nubians (both used as mercenaries at the beginning of the New Kingdom).

However, we cannot say these fully egyptianized Libyan or Ethiopian rulers destroyed Egyptian culture, quite on the contrary. They were proud to stand at the head of Egypt, to prove to the traditional pantheon that their rule favored them and they Egypt (so that the deities of Egypt would remember them). Indeed, just before and after the Assyrian conquest, Dynastic Rule was characterized by a revival of archaic Egyptian forms. The extraordinary wealth of Egypt was monumentalized on a grand scale by artist and architects who were also state-funded archeologists of Egyptian culture. They studied the papyri in the various "Houses of Life" and rediscovered the old canon. They copied "worm-eaten" documents to make them better than before. For in their minds, the Solar Pharaohs of old were the true foundation of Egyptian Statehood (Old Kingdom nostalgia can also be found in the New Kingdom).

1.2 A few remarks concerning the Late Period.

The XXVIth or "Saite" Dynasty (664 - 525 BCE) installed by Assurbanipal, allowed for the resurgence of Egypt's unity and power. Necho I was killed by the Nubians in 664 BCE and his son Psammetichus I (664 - 610 BCE) was an able stateman. He was trusted by the Assyrians and left alone by the "Ethiopians". Because the Assyrians could not maintain their military presence in Egypt, Pharaoh was able to reunite Egypt. He immediately revitalized the Egyptian form by relying on the vast cultural heritage and its recorded memory. A short renaissance saw the light. And also in this period, the Greeks recontacted the Egyptians for the first time since generations. Carians and Ionians were enlisted by Pharaoh, who made his scribes study Greek.

"Saitic Egypt, with her turning back to the great pharaonic times and her consciousness of a great cultural past, the memory of which reaches back to a time long forgotten ("Saitic Renaissance", Assmann, 2000), is seen as the teacher of knowledge and wisdom, for she is recognized for her old age and for her wisdom that derives from that antiquity. It seems to be especially this "cultural memory" (Assmann, 2000) of Saitic Egypt that determines the image of Egypt in later Greek generations." - Matthews & Roemer, 2003, pp.14.

The Saite Dynasty sought to maintain the great heritage of the Egyptian past. Ancient works were copied and mortuary cults were revived. Demotic became the accepted form of cursive script in the royal chanceries. These Pharaohs focused on keeping Egypt's frontiers secure, and moved far into Asia, even further than the New Kingdom rulers Thutmose I and III.

When Cyrus the Great of Persia ascended the throne in 559 BCE, Pharaoh Ahmose II or Amasis (570 - 526 BCE) was left with no other option than to cultivate close relations with Greek states to prepare Egypt for the Persian invasion of 525. The latter led to the defeat and capture of Psammetichus III (526 - 525) by Cambyses (who died in 522 BCE).

Under Persian rule (525 - 404 BCE), Egypt became a satrapy of the Persian Empire. The Persians left the Egyptian administration in place, but some of their rulers, like Cambyses and later Xerxes (486 - 465 BCE) disregarded temple privilege. The gods and their priests were humiliated. Only Darius I (522 - 486 BCE) displayed some regard for the native religion. When Darius II died (404 BCE), a Libyan, Amyrtaios of Sais, led an uprising and again Egypt would enjoy a relatively long period of independence under "native" rulers, the last of which being Pharaoh Nektanebo II (360 -  343 BCE).

A second Persian invasion (343 BCE) ended these short Dynasties (28, 29 & 30, between 404 - 343 BCE). But with Alexander the Great (entering Egypt in December 332 BCE), Egypt came under Macedonian rule. The Greeks respected Egypt and its gods and Greek communities had been living there for generations. In 305, the Ptolemaic Empire was initiated (it ended in 30 BCE). Mass immigration happened  : Greeks, Macedonians, Thracians, Jews, Arabs, Mysians and Syrians settled in Egypt, attracted by the prospect of employment, land and economic opportunity. Foreign slaves and prisoners of war were brought to Egypt by the new rulers.

Between 30 BCE and 642 CE, Egypt was ruled by the Romans and the Byzantines, before it became Islamic as it still is today.

1.3 Greek trading, recontacting & settling in Egypt.

Old Kingdom Egypt used mercenaries in military expeditions. Nubians settled in the late VIth Dynasty in the southernmost nome of Elephantine and were employed in border police units.

"Contact with Minoan Crete and the Mycenaean Greeks is well attested. The image of Egypt is already firmly established in the Homeric poems and a plethora of Egyptian artefacts has been unearthed in Greece, the Aegean and even in western Greek colonies such as Cumae and Pithecusa in Italy from as early as the eighth century." - La'ada, in Matthews & Roemer, 2003, p.158.

The presence of Libyans and Nubians is attested in the armies of Pharaohs Kamose and Ahmose at the start of the New Kingdom. An alliance between the Hyksos Dynasty and the Minoans existed.

"In return for protecting the sea approaches to Egypt, the Minoans might have secured harbour facilities and access to those precious commodities (especially gold) for which Egypt was famous in the outside world." - Bietak, M., 1996, p.81.

With Pharaoh Ahmose (ca. 1539 - 1292 BCE), Minoan culture enters Egyptian history. Indeed, in the aftermath of the sack of Avaris (Tell el-Dab'a - ca. 1540 BCE), the capital of the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period (ca. 1759 - 1539 BCE), the fortifications and palace of the last Hyksos king (Khamudi) were systematically destroyed. Pharaoh Ahmose replaced them with short lived buildings reconstructed from foundations and fragments of wall paintings of the ruins. The fragments were found in dumps to level the fortifications & palatial structures of Ahmose. These paintings were Minoan !

Their presence, 100 years earlier than the first representations of Cretans in Theban tombs and earlier than the surviving frescos at Knossos, whose naturalistic subject matter they share, shows the cultural links between Crete and Egypt (before and after the sack of Avaris). These frescos seem to owe little to Egyptian tradition and serve a ritual purpose : bull-leapers, acrobats and the motives of the bull's head and the labyrinth point to Early Cretan religion.

As a small amount of Minoan Kamares ware pottery was found in XIIIth Dynasty strata (Middle Kingdom), it is not impossible Egyptian artistic style influenced Crete as far back as the Old Kingdom (jewels). These early periods do not evidence the systematic immigration of Greeks. The links between Greece and Egypt, as with many other nations, were probably foremost economical.

We know Pharaoh Psammetichus I (664 - 610 BCE) employed Carian and Ionian mercenaries in his efforts to strengthen his authority (ca. 658 BCE) against the Assyrians. He also put some boys into the charge of the Greeks, and their learning of the language was the origin of the class of Egyptian interpreters, and the "regular intercourse with the Egyptians" began. He allowed Milesians to settle in Upper Egypt (not far from the capital Sais). This was the first time Greeks were allowed to stay in Egypt.

"With the enrollment of Greek mercenaries into his service, Egypt became more important from the Greeks' point of view than the ruined cities of Syria." - Burkert, 1992, p.14.

It is Herodotus who, in his Histories, informs us that camps ("stratopeda") were established between Bubastis and the sea on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. They were occupied without a break for over a century until these Greek mercenaries were moved to Memphis at the beginning of the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose II or "Amasis" (570 - 526 BCE). They were reintroduced in the area at a later stage to counter the growing menace of Persia (525 BCE). 

The Greek inscription found on the leg of one of the colossi at Abu Simbel, indeed indicates that mercenaries, under Egyptian command, formed one of two corps in the army, whose supreme commander was also an Egyptian. Under Pharaoh Apries (589 - 570 BCE), there was a revolt of mercenaries at Elephantine ... Because the Ionians and Carians were also active in piracy, the Egyptians were forced to restrict the immigration of Greeks, punishing infringement by the sacrifice of the victim. 

Herodotus (II.177,1) also comments that during Pharaoh Amasis, Egypt attained its highest level of prosperity both in respect to crops and the number of inhabited cities (indeed, an estimated 3 million people lived in Egypt). It was under this Pharaoh that the Greeks were allowed to move beyond the coast of Lower Egypt. Trade was encouraged and the sources, mostly Greek, refer to trading stations such as "The Wall of the Milesians", and "Islands" bearing names as Ephesus, Chios, Lesbos, Cyprus and Samos. 

A lot of Greek centres emerged, but the best-documented trading centre was Naukratis on the Canopic branch of the Nile not far from Sais and with excellent communications. It was founded by Milesians between 650 - 610 BCE (under Pharaoh Psammetichus I). From ca. 570 BCE, all Greek trade had to move through Naukratis by law. So, before the end of the 6th century BCE, the Greeks had their own colony in Egypt. The travels of individual Greeks to Egypt for the purpose of their education, as well as Greek immigration to Kemet, the "black" land, is usually dated at the time of the Persian invasion (525 BCE). However, it can not be excluded that Pharaoh Psammetichus I allowed Greek intelligentsia to study in Memphis.

Summarizing Greece/Egypt chronology (all dates BCE) :

• ca.2600 : Neolithic Crete : first sporadic contacts with Old Kingdom Egypt (Dynasty IV) ;

• ca.1700 : neopalatial Minoan Crete : Mediterranean network of artistic and iconographic exchange, communication between Minoan high culture and Egypt (XIIIth Dynasty) ;

• ca.1530 : Hyksos ruins in Minoan style (Avaris) are used by Pharaoh Ahmose I ;

• ca. 670 : Pharaoh Psammetichus I initiated the study of Greek, employed Greek mercenaries against the Assyrians, set up a camp that stayed in the western Delta and allowed the Miletians to found Neukratis ;

• 570 : under Pharaoh Ahmose II (Amasis) the Greeks were allowed to travel beyond the western Delta - Neukratis became an exclusive Greek trading centre complete with Greek temples. He cultivated close relations with Greek states to help him against the impending Persian onslaught ;

• 525 : Egypt a satrapy of the Persia empire, start of a more pronounced Greek immigration to Egypt ;

• 332 : Egypt invaded & plundered by the Macedonians ;

• 305 : Egypt ruled by Greek Pharaohs ;

• 30 : death of Queen Cleopatra VII, the last Egyptian ruler.

2. Greece before Pharaoh Amasis (before 570 BCE).

2.1 Short history of Ancient Greece.

The earliest traces of habitation on Crete belong to the 7th millenium BCE. Continuous Neolithic habitation have been noted at Knossos from the middle of the fifth millenium BCE. Towards the middle of the 3th millenium BCE (ca. 2600 BCE) a peaceful immigration took place, probably from Asia Minor and Africa, introducing the Bronze Age to Crete. Before establishing a list of historical parallels, let us summarize the evolution of Ancient Greek culture as follows (all dates BCE) :

• Minoan Crete (ca. 2600 - 1150) : This period is subdivided on the basis of the pottery or the rebuilding of the palaces. 
  
  The Palatial Chronology is : 
  
  prepalatial (ca. 2600 - 1900) : The arrival of new racial elements in Crete brought the use of bronze and strongly built houses of stone and brick with a large number of rooms and paved courtyards, with a varied pottery of many styles - society was organized in "clans" ("genos"), and farming, stock-raising, shipping and commerce were developed to a systematic level - the appearance of figurines of the Mother Goddess - Egyptian influence at work in golden & ivory jewels ;
  protopalatial (ca. 1900 - 1730) : Centralization of power in the hands of kings, and the first large palace centres with wide cultural influence : Knossos, Phaestos, Malia and Zakros (and there must have been more) - production of very fine vases or vessels of stone and faience, sealstones of precious or semi-precious stones, elegant weapons & tools - the emergence of naturalistic hieroglyphic and dynamic scenes - the pantheon has the Great Goddess as its main element as well as the use of sacred symbols such as the sacred horns and the double axe - society is hierarchical and contacts with the outside world become frequent - hieroglyphic script (derived from Egyptian models ?) developed into Linear A (late protopalatial) - a terrible disaster, perhaps caused by earthquakes, destroyed the first palace centres ca. 1730 BCE ;
  neopalatial (ca. 1730 - 1380) : Minoan civilization reached its zenith with the reconstruction of more magnificient palaces on the ruins of the old - increase in the number of roads, organization of the harbours, increase of trade - feudal & theocratic society installing & maintaining the "Pax Minoica", facilitating the cultural development of Crete - main deity is still the Great Goddess, portrayed as a chthonic goddess with the snakes, the "Mistress of the Animals" (lions & chamois) or the goddess of the heavens (birds & stars), worshipped together with the god of fertility, who had the form of a bull - the hieroglyphic script became Linear A (with two hundred surviving texts), used until the collapse of the Pax Minoica - in ca. 1530 the Thera volcano on Santorini erupted - from about 1500 onwards there was a significant increase of Mycenæan influence - the rise of the use of a syllabic, ruling-class language, Mycenæan Greek, now called "Linear B" (imported by the Mycenæans to Crete) ;
  postpalatial (ca. 1380 - 1100) : after the final destruction of Knossos in 1380, none of the Minoan palaces were re-inhabited - Mycenæan culture took over (ca. 1450) and their presence is attested both by Linear B and the appearance of typical pottery. Ca. 1100, the descent of the Dorians heralded the demise of Minoan civilization.
   

• Helladic Age (ca. 2800 - 1100) : This period is preceded by the Neolithical Period. The earliest settlers reached Greece from Anatolia during the 7th millenium. Good pasturage drew them to the plains of Thessaly or Boeotia and the land round the gulf or Argos. They did not know the plough. The transition from this Neolithic communites to a metal-working culture (first half of the 3th millenium) was not always peacefully accomplished.
  
  Following subdivisions prevail :
  
  Early Helladic I (ca. 2800 - 2600) : Greece inhabited by these so-called "pre-Helladics" who did not speak Greek. At first, they lacked farming expertise. They worshipped the Mother Goddess. Stone houses replaced mud-bricks. The Stone Age sites they erected provided collective defence against some external threat. Trade, especially by sea, began to flourish. Political and economical agricultural urbanism. Local barons ruled an area of up to ten miles' radius round a walled hilltop site.
  
  Early Helladic II (ca. 2600 - 2100) : They eventually capitalized and developed this progress and formed a civilized society.
  
  Middle Helladic (ca. 2100 - 1600) : The arrival, in 2100 and later between 1950 and 1900, of marauding barbarians who burnt and destroyed the fortified towns. 
  
  "Greece, at all events, like Italy, Anatolia, and India, only came under Indo-European influence during the migrations of the Bronze Age. Nevertheless, the arrival of the Greeks in Greece, or, more precisely, the immigration of a people bearing a language derived from Indo-European and known to us as the language of the Hellenes, as Greek, is a question scarcely less controversial, even if somewhat more defined. The Greek language is first encountered in the fourtheenth century in the Linear B texts." - Burkert, 1985, p.16.
  
  These newcomers formed the spearhead of a vast collective migrant movement originating somewhere in the great plateau of central Asia, sweeping West and South from Russia across the Danube and penetrating the Balkans from the North. The Greek language they spoke was a branch of the Indo-European group (as is Vedic Sanskrit) and they are regarded as the first, true "archaic" Greeks. The female fertility images vanished and were replaced by a male sky-god cult and a feudal, palace-based society akin to that of Homer's Olympians. These warrior-aristocrats were totally unaware of seafaring and became Mediterranean traders once the slow process of acclimatization was on its way.
  
  Mycenæan Age (ca. 1600 - 1100) : The mythical Danaus (ca. 1600  - 1570), a Hyksos refugee, took over Mycenæ and established the "Shaft Grave dynasty" which lasted for several generations. Mycenæan Greece was split up into a number of small districts (and hence to regard Mycenæ itself as a "capital" is misleading), with a scribal caste at the service of warrior leaders, vigorous commercial economy (based on indirect consumption) and a high level of mostly imported craftsmanship. New were the "tholos" burials, with their domeshaped burial-chambers. Their palaces followed the architectural style of Crete, although their structure was more straightforward and simple. Linear B texts reveal the names of certain gods of the later Greek pantheon : Hera, Poseidon, Zeus, Ares and perhaps Dionysius. There are no extant theological treatises, hymns or short texts on ritual objects (as was the case in Crete). Their impressive tombs indicate that their funerary cult was more developed than the Minoan. 
  
  During the mid thirteenth century (ca. 1200 - 1190) several Peloponnesian sites suffered damage and within a century every major Mycenæan stronghold had fallen, never to be recovered. Indeed, a vast, anonymous horde with horned helmets and ox-driven covered wagons had made its way, locust-like, across the Hellespont, through the Hittite Empire, by way of Cilicia and the Phoenician coast to the gates of Egypt, to be defeated by Pharaoh Ramesses III (ca. 1186 - 1155) in two great battles. These nomadic "Dorians" destroyed what came in touch with them, and after their defeat, they vanished amid the wreckage of their own making. Athens never fell, and it is unconquered Athens we have to thank for what survives of the Mycenæan legends, although their customs vanished.
   

• Dark Ages (ca. 1100 - 750) : Over a period of nearly two centuries, beginning soon after 1100, we find eastward migrations, from mainland Greece to the coast of Asia Minor. These movements were driven by Mycenæan refugees, shaping a diaspora, speaking a dialect known as Aeolic. The rich central strip of Ionia was colonized (after a bitter struggle) after the Dorians overran mainland Greece. About 900, the Dorians themselves spread out eastward from the Peloponnese. Aeolic, Ionic and Doric elements intermingled. When Homer wrote his Illiad and Odyssey (ca. 750) or Hesiod his Theogony, the Greek world was desperately poor. The Dark Age practice of relying on a local chieftain for protection was encouraged. Greece was a series of small, isolated communities, clustering round a hilltop "big house".
   

• Archaic Period (ca. 750 - 478) : This period has also been called the "Age of Revolution", because after the slow recovery of the Dark Age, there came a sudden spurt or accelerated intellectual, cultural, economical and political efflorescence. Two divisions :
  
  from the Dark Age to the "Greek Miracle" (ca. 750 - 600) :
  
  The alphabet was derived from Phoenician, but scholars differ as to when this has happened. Some say shortly before the earliest inscriptions -found on pottery ca. 730-, while others propose an earlier date. The latter do not accept an illiterate Dark Age. Phoenician attained its classical form ca. 1050, and so a transmission of the alphabet in the late Mycenæan age could not be excluded. However, by 800 there was unity in language and, to some extent, a culture throughout the Aegean world. And in the same period as seagoing trade resurged (ca. 750), writing was reintroduced. Thanks to the use of a viable, fully vowelized, Phoenician-derived alphabet rather than a restricted syllabary (Linear B), literacy became a fact. This paved the way for the "Greek Miracle" in sixth-century Ionia. 
  
  Government was based -through hereditary aristocracy- on landownership. Between ca. 750 and 600, we find the crystallization of the city-state and the rise in power of the non-aristocrats, allying themselves with frustrated noble families and putting the hereditary principle under pressure. The two main leitmotivs of this age are discovery (literal and figural) and the process of settlement & codification. 
  
  With Hesiod (ca. 700), the poet-farmer from Ascra, described as the forerunner of the pre-Socratics, we find a mere lay poet taking upon himself the priestly task of systematizing myth according to the pattern of the family tree (genos). He saw the world as a muddled, chaotic place where the only hope lay in working out man's right relations with the gods, his fellow men and his natural, barely controllable environment. Homeric ideals, looking back five centuries in the past (to idealize the Mycenæan age), were swept away. Although Hesiod betrays nostalgia for the good old days, he knows that they are over. Those who have no power to implement their wishes, must appeal to general principles. Hence, his morality is that of the underprivileged and his emphasis on the omnipotent Zeus, who bestows the gift of justice ("dike"). Shortly after Hesiod, we see the rise of lyric poetry which -in the fifth century- gave way to drama (in choral form) and to prose.
  
  Although Homer (ca. 700) thought along paratactic (creating sentences without subcoordinating or subordinating connectives), symbolical and mythical lines, Hesiod did not know what an abstraction was. The idea of the polis emerged, but was characterized by the tension between rational progressivism and emotional conservatism, between civic ideals and ties of consanguinity, between blood-guilt and jury justice, between old religion and the new secularizing philosophy. Indeed, with the Ionians Thales and Anaximander of Miletus, Greek philosophy was born (ca. 600). Between 650 - 600 we also witness the rapidly developing emphasis on human concerns : anthropocentrism. From about 675 onwards, the "tyrannoi" began to seize power in the city-states all over the Aegean world : Argos, Sicyon, Corinth, Mytilene, Samos, Naxos, Miletus and Magara among other fell in their hands. They were an urban-based phenomenon and were eager to promote fresh colonizing ventures.
  
  from the "Greek Miracle" to the Classical Period (ca. 600 - 478) :
  
  During this period, Greece's great revolution was brought to completion. The stiff, Egyptian stance of the male statues ("kouroi") began to lose its hieratic formality. Politically, the slow evolution of democratic government at Athens and the rise of Persia have to be noticed. The predominantly "scientific" interests associated with Miletus, gave way between 550 and 500 to a more mystically oriented movement, to which Pythagoras, Heracleitus and Xenophanes each contributed. Between 514 and 479 all Greek history is dominated by the shadow of Persia, which contributed to finally establish the right of mainland Greece to persue its own way of life. A mere handful of Greek states did stand out against the gigantism of the Persian Empire and the palace absolutism of the Near East.
  
  During this Archaic period, pre-Socratic philosophy developed.
   

• Athenian Imperialism (478 - 404) : With the formation of the "Delian League", Athens broke away from the "Hellenic League", which had fought against Xerxes. In 469, Cimon took a large fleet to the eastern Mediterranean and routed Persia's forces. He reopened the old Levant-route to Rhodes, Cyprus, Phoenicia and Egypt. The drift of new learning, both in the speculative as in other fields, was firmly anthropocentric. The gods were left out or replaced by exotic, enthusiastic and uncivic foreign cults. The Eleusinian Mysteries were an attempt to provide this trend with some official outlook. The Sophists emerged and pioneered the great liberal movement, criticized by Plato. In 404, Athens at last surrendered to Sparta, and exchanged one despotism by another.
   

• Decline of the polis (404 - 323) : The next three decades, the isolationist, old-fashioned and autocratic Spartan government ruled, triggering the formation of an anti-Spartan coalition and Persia playing each side off against the other. Thebes and Athens were thrown into alliance, the latter breaking Sparta's hold on Greece. This proved a mere repetition, but under a better leadership, of the Spartan experience. Sparta, Athens, Elis, Achaea and Mantinea formed a coalition against Thebes. With the rise of Philip II of Macedonia (359), the whole picture changed, and in 338 all organized resistance to Macedonia ceased. With the death of his son, Alexander the Great (323) a new era began (namely Hellenism). The city-states vanished and became part of the new imperial rule.

Chronological Table of the Aegean Bronze Age compared with Ancient Egypt

The Memphis Theology is inscribed on the right hand side of the Shabaka Stone, a near black block or slab of basalt, erected by Pharaoh Shabaka (ca. 712 - 698 BCE), the Ethiopian, in Memphis (ca. 710 BCE). It is probably the most remarkable and interesting opus of Ancient Egyptian literature left to us, and this for various reason, not in the least philosophical. 

In Line 2 of the inscription, Pharaoh affirms (and the spatial disposition of the text on the stone confirms) he had copied it from a worm-eaten original (papyrus in hieratic script ?) and had made it better than before (a new composition in hieroglyphs on stone). 

Reconstruction of the layout of the Shabaka Stone by Breasted - in : Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, Berlin, n°39 (102), 1902, plates 1 & 2.

A squarish hole is cut deep into the stone in the center, out of which eleven rough channels radiate, as a result of ignorant disregard in post-Pharaonic Egypt, when it was used as a nether millstone (note that Breasted drew only ten channels). The scribal voids in the first columns (left) may refer to the damaged original Pharaoh Shabaka found, namely the outermost edge of a scroll rolled from left to right (Sethe, 1928). Breasted situated the original in the XVIIIth Dynasty, although today scholars tend to place it in the Late Ramesside Era, i.e. after Amarna).  It is probable that the original was a compendium of Memphite texts (Junker, 1939).

portrait of Pharaoh Shabaka
from the naos he erected in the temple of Esna
XXVth Dynasty (712 - 698 BC)

The major assets of the Shabaka Stone are :

• historical : The inscription refers to three different periods in the history of Ancient Egypt. Indeed, extant text, original text and original ideas of the inscription on the Shabaka Stone  each have a different age : the extant text was inscribed on stone by Pharaoh Shabaka ca. 710 BCE (XXVth Dynasty - Third Intermediate Period), the worm-eaten originals were probably written under the Ramesses (XIXth or XXth Dynasty, ca. 1295 - 1075 BCE - Junker, 1939), while the original ideas may go back as far as the Vth Dynasty (Old Kingdom). Grimal (1988) is the only leading contemporary egyptologists who continues to attribute the inscription to the Old Kingdom. Even if this last layer is not considered, we know the Ethiopians wanted to adorn themselves with an Old Kingdom style. These archaisms are also present in the text and have been put there because older original examples were taken into considerations and reworked. Most scholars accept Pharaoh Shabaka indeed "found" a series of old documents in the library of Ptah's temple in Memphis, although some do not, understanding the stela to be part of the propaganda-campaign of the "black" Ethiopian Dynasty (note Shabaka's name -Line 1- was removed). The fact Shabaka said he made it better, is for some proof he wanted to be worthy enough to rule Egypt from Memphis, the "capital" of the Old Kingdom.

• linguistical : Since Junge (1973) showed the language of the text belonged to the XXVth Dynasty, nobody (except Grimal) is willing to assign the worm-eaten original to the Old Kingdom. Indeed, the archaizing language of the text misled generations of outstanding egyptologists (like Frankfort) to accept an Old Kingdom date. This fact alone shows how able Shabaka's scribe was and how well the "old" schemes were preserved in various inscriptions on stone and papyrus. It is clear the scribe used this knowledge to rework the text and he added elements which enabled Junge to understand the text as a composition of the XXVth Dynasty (like the name "tanen"). Neither the presence of these elements, nor compositional intent, contradict the possibility an older copy was present, or that Shabaka's scribe could have used older examples to compose this exceptional literary work ca.710 BCE. Junker (1939) did put into evidence the text was composed using more than one example, suggesting the original was a body made up of various texts. So, the Shabaka Stela is probably a compendium of Memphite thought.

• literary : The text has exceptional synthetic qualities. Indeed, the fundamental facts of Egyptian political, ritual, theological & (verbal) philosophical thought are presented in a composed and well-organized format. The inscription has 61 columns and 3 rows (two large header rows and one smaller), or a total of 64 lines, of which one is empty (Line 5).

  The table of contents has 6 sections :

  1. LINES 1 - 2 : heading (titulary, colophon) : general information about the stela & editorial remarks concerning its finding and composition ;

  2. LINES 3 - 6 : prefaces : LINES 3 - 4 : general declaration of Ptah's supremacy as proclaimer of the great name of "Tanen" and as Pharaoh (LINE 5 is empty) ; LINE 6 : introduction of the mystery-drama of the deities created by Atum begat by Ptah ; 

  3. LINES 7 - 35b : the mystery-drama : here the division (decided by Geb) of the rule of Egypt between Horus and Seth is narrated and enacted. This settlement is replaced by the union of the Two Lands under the sole rule of Horus, who is a manifestation of Ptah.

  4. LINES 48 - 52 : new heading & Ptah's epiphanies : reaffirmation that all deities are manifestations in Ptah, to whom Ptah gave birth ; 

  5. LINES 53 - 61 : the theology of Memphis, containing a verbal philosophy ;

  6. LINES 61 - 64 : the royal residence : Memphis is the city of Ptah-Tanen.

• theological : Although the theological schemes developed in Ancient Egypt (Heliopolitan, Hermopolitan, Memphite, Osirian & Theban) complement each other, in the late New Kingdom (after the Amarna-crisis), theologians sought to arrive at a better articulation of Divine unity. In this inscription, we are told Ptah is the Supreme Being who used the "image of Atum" to create the world. Although the Memphite theologians considered their verbal solution (creation through the Divine Word) more accomplished than the mythical cosmogony of Heliopolis, they did not oppose the earlier scheme but integrated it into the Memphite concept. This tendency to shape a "novel" and "superior" but "integrated" theology can also be seen at work in Thebes in the late Ramesside period - cf. the Hymns to Amun, wherein the "one and millions"-formula is prominent (Amun as "deus invisibilis et ineffabilis") as well as a trinitarian solution to the problem of divine multiplicity.

• philosophical : My own contribution comes from the side of epistemology, layering cognitive growth in modes of thought which develop in stages (cf. after the genetical approach of Piaget).  These investigations reveal the absence of rational, abstract, discursive thought as part of the cultural form of Ancient Egyptian civilization. To understand Ancient Egyptian thinking, one is much helped by the analysis of the earliest stages of cognition, characterized by mythical, pre-rational and proto-rational modes of thought and their prelogical, pre-conceptual and concrete operational standards (cf. Heka and Rules). These early modes of thought are at work in our text : the mystery-play summarizes the foundational Dynastic myth and the dialogues between the deities operates according to pre-rationality's rules of cognition. The way distinctions are bridged by the all-encompassing concept of Ptah is typical for proto-rational activity (cf. the introduction of a universal, like Anaximander's "to apeiron", the boundless). It would therefore be unfair to deny Ancient Egyptian civilization its metaphysical, theological or mystical intentions & cognitive activities, albeit mythical, pre-rational & proto-rational. This points to the importance of multiple, non-linear approaches in the Egyptian mind. Section V, the theology of Memphis, has three subdivisions : 

  1. LINES 53 - 57 : logoism : the description of the logoic process with which Ptah created everything, including all possible deities and the reason why this Memphite theology supercedes the Heliopolitan one of Atum. Rudiments of an epistemology are given ;

  2. LINES 57 - 58 : natural philosophy : a holistic philosophy of nature ;

  3. LINES 58 - 61 : pan-en-theism : poetical affirmation that Ptah is everywhere & everything and that all is in Ptah. Ptah is above (celestial) as well as below (terrestial).

• political : Last but not least, the inscription finally affirms the importance of Memphis, the city of the coronation of Pharaoh. The mystery play also culminated in the notion of "the House of Ptah, the 'Balance of the Two Lands' in which Upper and Lower Egypt had been weighed." (Line 16c). Ptah incarnates as Horus, who is crowned as Pharaoh, and who abides in Memphis. The Royal Residence is the sacred place of the presence of the divine on Earth. The text affirms Memphis, "the Great Throne that gives joy to the heart of the gods in the House of Ptah, is the granary of Tanen, the mistress of all life, through which the sustenance of the Two Lands is provided ..." (Line 61).

► a major text of Ancient Egyptian literature

Breasted, the eminent American egyptologist, was the first to recognize the importance of this text as early as 1901 : the stela had been in the British Museum for nearly a century without anybody taking serious notice of it before Breasted -in difficult circumstances- made the first historical transcription. After translating the work (and situating its conjectured original in the XVIIIth Dynasty), he wrote :

"The above conception of the world forms quite a sufficient basis for suggesting that the later notions of nous and logos, hitherto supposed to have been introduced into Egypt from abroad at a much later date, were present at this early period. Thus the Greek tradition of the origin of their philosophy in Egypt undoubtedly contains more of the truth than has in recent years been conceded. (...) The habit, later so prevalent among the Greeks, of interpreting philosophically the functions and relations of the Egyptian gods (...) has already begun in Egypt before the earliest Greek philosophers were born ; and it is not impossible that the Greek practice of the interpretations of their own gods received its first impulse from Egypt." - Breasted, 1901, p.54.

For Frankfort (1948), wrongly situating the conjectured original in the Early Dynastic Period, the text had clearly biblical connotations : 

"We know from numerous other texts that 'heart' stands for 'intellect', 'mind', and even 'spirit'. The 'tongue' is realizing thought ; it translates concepts into actuality by means of 'Hu' - authoritative utterance. We must then, read these passages as the true Egyptian equivalent of John's 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' The Egyptian mode of expression strikes us as clumsy because we assume involuntarily that a more abstract mode was available ; but, of course, it was not." - Frankfort, 1978, p.29.

Morenz (1960) wrote : 

"The Memphite Theology, that hymn to the creative word, does not contain the least suggestion that the word of God needed any ready-made material." - Morenz, 1996, p.172, my italics.

And after nearly a century of praise, we still read :

"The Memphite Theology is, undeniably, a remarkable document, and it clearly ascribes an intellectual and volitional motive to creation, with a focus on the heart or mind of the creator and the manifestation of thought in language and material reality. For this reason the theology has been cited as an antecedent to the first verses of both the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of John." - Hare, 1999, pp.178-179.

The Memphite Theology has recently also been part of a serious polemic between classical scholars and historians. In his controversial and refuted work, Stolen Legacy (1954), George G.M.James wrote that the Memphis Theology :

"... contains the theological, cosmological and philosophical views of the Egyptians. (...) Just as the Memphite Theology is the source of Greek philosophy or primitive science, so it is also the basis of modern scientific belief."
James, 1992, pp.139 & 145.

In his Black Athena (1987), Bernal remarks : 

"... proof that Egyptians could think in terms of abstract religion, which was published eighty years ago, has received so little attention. The proof comes from a text generally called Memphite Theology, which dates back to the 2nd and 3rd millenium." - Bernal, 1987, p.140.

In her Not Out of Africa (1996), Lefkowitz rightly argues against Afrocentrism and its myth of the "stolen legacy". But in doing so, she wrongly represents the tenets of the Memphis Theology. She writes : "The Memphis inscription relates how Ptah's mind (or 'heart') and thought (or 'tongue') created the universe and all living creatures in it." (pp.140-141). How can somebody claim the Memphis Theology is a work "of a totally different character from any of Aristotle's treatises" (p.140), and then misrepresent its contents ? Indeed, the "logoic" element of the Memphite theology is not mentioned and its crucial passage is badly translated. Clearly, the author of the Memphite Theology wanted to stress the difference between the "heart" (mind) and "tongue" (speech), which are nevertheless simultaneous when Ptah creates the universe (Hare, 1999, p.184). The fact Lefkowitz translates "tongue" as "thought" proves she did not understand the theology at hand. Why ? Because of her insistence (which seems as dogmatical and blind as James' mythical Afrocentricism -but for better reasons-) the Greeks did never use Egyptian sources, a statement as wrong as its logical opposite ...

"Aristotle did not steal books from the library of Alexandria and try to pass them off as his own. Nor did any of the other Greek philosophers learn their ideas in Egypt, because even if they went there (and not all of them did), they would not have been able to study with priests in the Egyptian Mystery System. The existence of a few common themes does not prove or even suggest that Greek writers plagiarized from the Book of the Dead, the Memphite Theology, or any other Egyptian source." - Lefkowitz, 1996, p.150.

This line of argumentation is muddled (emotional ?). First of all, the decisive influence of Egypt (Memphis) on the Greeks was during the Early Archaic Age. Between 670 - 500 BCE, the Greeks developed their own "Dorian" mode of thought and in turn influenced the Egyptians and other cultures. So to refute the idea of Egyptian influence, Lefkowitz should have studied the Archaic Period, and not the Classical Greeks (for it is obvious -although not for James- that the abstract ideas of Plato and Aristotle are indeed far removed from the proto-rationality of the Egyptians). 

Secondly, Egypt had developed a verbal philosophy long before the Milesians founded Neukratis, and although it was not abstract but rooted in myth and pre-rationality (making use of a pictoral language), it nevertheless contained the essence of the later Greek "idea" of the "logos", namely that the creator created creation with a thought and an utterance. This notion can not be found in Minoan and Mycenæan cultures. 

Thirdly, although indeed no "pure" Egyptian Mystery System ever existed (being an invention of Alexandrian Egypt and later part of the mythology proposed by the European Masonic tradition), it is probable that the Greek mercenaries & travellers were well received in Egypt by Pharaoh Psammetichus I and his son Pharaoh Necho II. Can it be excluded they learned about Egyptian religion and sapiental discourses from the Memphite priest ? No. Indeed, the contrary is more likely.

Finally, if we may believe Diogenius Laërtius, Pythagoras brought with him to Egypt a letter of recommendation of Polycrates for Pharaoh Amasis and also three silver cups "for each of the priests of Egypt" (referring to the high-priests of Memphis, Heliopolis and Thebes). We are told he learned Egyptian (cf. Lives, Book VIII, who refers to Antiphon's Men of Extraordinary Merit) and studied there. The possibility Pythagoras was able to read hieroglyphic inscriptions can therefore not be excluded, neither can it be affirmed the Greeks learned nothing from the Egyptians. 

As is often the case with polemic constructions, Lefkowitz was unable to present the results of a balanced intellectual exercise (A and B, instead of A or B), clearly prejudiced in favor of the Aryan thesis. Unfortunately, this drains her work of its vitality, for by rightly opposing James, she became dependent on likewise weak arguments and doubtful readings.

► obvious parallels with various components of Greek philosophy

Since ca. 800 BCE, the Greeks spoke again one language. Only ca. 40 years separate the recording of the works of Homer (ca. 750 BCE) from the memorable installation of the Shabaka Stone in the temple of Ptah in Memphis. Around that time (i.e. ca. 710 BCE), no direct and major indirect cultural ties existed between these "new" Greeks and Egypt. It is only when the former started their journeys and marauded the Delta, that they were noticed by the Egyptians (and ranked as pirates). Hence, it is impossible that Egypt initiated the Greek Renaissance (ignited by one spoken and written language, i.e. between ca. 800 - 750 BCE).

At the start of the Assyrian conquest (671 - 664 BCE), Milesian Greeks were incorporated in the Egyptian army (as reported by Herodotus). They were however not allowed to settle in Memphis or travel upstream. 

When Pharaoh Psammetichus I (664 - 610 BCE) invited Greeks at his court, some remained there as mediators between Greece and Egypt. That a minority of Greeks were taught by priests of the temple of Ptah is likely. Direct evidence is of course not available, but the time-window does not contradict the hypothesis under investigation : intelligent Greeks may have learned about Egyptian thought under Pharaoh Psammetichus I (664 - 610 BCE) or thereafter, but not before 664 BCE (Thebes sacked by the Assyrians and ca. 40 years before the birth of Thales of Miletus ca. 624 BCE). Hence, a fruitful encounter with the vast traditional knowledge of the Memphite priests cannot be excluded. 

We should remind ourselves : the Egyptian temple libraries contained an astonishingly large number of domains covered by priestly knowledge.

"... archaeological investigation has permitted the recovery of the very works kept in one of these libraries, in the little town of Tebtunis in the Faiyum. Among these documents, in addition to rituals and treatises on astronomy and medicine, a certain number of literary texts written in Demotic have been identified (the stories of Setne, which have already been mentioned, and of Pedubaste), as well as three onomastica (i.e. collections of words classified according to their meanings) and several copies of an otherwise known book of wisdom." - Sauneron, 2000, p.136.

An attempt is made to answer the question of the influence of Egyptian thought on Greek philosophy in the context of the inscription on the Shabaka Stone. Which components of the Memphis Theology may have been incorporated into Archaic Greek thought and to whom were they assigned ?

Following general correspondences spring to the fore :

1. water as the source of all things : we are told this doctrine was proposed by Thales of Miletus (ca. 624 - 545 BCE), who -according to Aristotle in Metaphysica A (983b6v) and De Caelo (294a28v)- saw water (moist) as the "arche" of all what exists and the Earth as floating on water as it were a piece of wood or a ship. For Homer, the "arche" was the starting-point-in-time, a cause of action and potential of initiative. For Thales, water was the first principle of natural philosophy developed in the proto-rational mode of thought. After him, Fire (Heraclitus, ca. 500 BCE) & Air (Anaximenes, ca. 585 - 525 BCE) will also be proposed, until Empedocles (ca. 490 - 430 BCE) completes the theory on the elements of creation.
   
   "Nun", the primordial ocean, the "father of the gods", was the starting-point of the Memphite, Heliopolitan, Hermopolitan and Theban cosmogonies. It preexisted outside time and space, and is the true beginning with no beginning. The preexistent ocean was conceived as undifferentiated and absolutely inert, dark and unlimited, boundless & chaotic. Because of the self-creative act of the creator of everything, floating in Nun, or Atum, and the co-relative, simultaneous emergence of the primordial hill or mount of creation ("tenen"), the primordial waters are made to surrounds the place of creation. This happened in the "first time" ("zep tepy"), a liminal existence between preexistence proper and creation. Because of this material and creative causa sui, creation unfolded in the midst of these primordial waters. Also : the importance of water for the Egyptian economy justifies the metaphor of the Nile as the "source of all things" Egyptian.
   
   In the theology of the Memphites, Ptah is also Nun (or Ptah-Nun). The Memphis Theology starts with a series of identifications. The primordial waters are made part of Ptah's process of creation. Nun and his consort are the first epiphanies of Ptah. All deities are. This theology resembles late Ramesside Amun-Re theology, with the difference that Ptah creates the world through throughts and speech.

2. the boundlessness of pre-creation : Anaximander of Miletus (ca. 611 - 547 BC), a friend and pupil of Thales, proposed the "apeiron" or "boundless" to be the first inexhaustible principle. In it, two natural forces produce an explosion creating the universe (the wet & cold interior is in permanent conflict with its dry & hot exterior). In Hermopolitan theology ("khemenu" or "City of the Eight"), pre-creation was characterized by eight chaos-gods. Hou and Haouet, the boundless & the undefined were part of this Ogdoad (or company of eight deities headed by Thoth). The double polarity of the Ogdoad (four times two) is obvious and typical for the polarized state of affairs before and after creation. Indeed, for the Heliopolitans, Atum-Re self-created and was simultaneously divided in Air (space) or the god "Shu" and Water (moist) or the goddess "Tefnut". In the Memphite theology, the boundless is expressed by the all-encompassing nature of Ptah, who is Nun, Atum-Re, Shu, Tefnut and all possible deities. It is also present in the sense of an "alpha privativum" (cf. "a-peiron") in the explicit ontological distinction between preexistence and existence, for example between Ptah-Nun and Ptah-Horus.

3. natural moral law : for the pre-Socratics, moral law was natural law. Like Maat, Dike would operate to make justice and truth stand firm.

4. the dual oppositions : in pre-Socratic philosophy, the doctrine of the opposites played a major role in explaining the actual state of affairs in creation. The dialectical opposition between the "cold" and the "warm" being typical for the Milesians. The oppositions are living forces which combat each other, causing periodical crisis, terror & change (cf. Heraclitus on "war"). In later Greek philosophy, this doctrine becomes ontological, as in the difference between "being" and "non-being" in Parmenidian thought or the radical gulf separating the Heraclitic world of becoming from the world of being in Plato's system. In Egypt, both politics and theology were founded on the notion of harmonizing dual oppositions : the unification of the "Two Lands" in one Pharaoh, the settled peace after the battle between Horus and Seth, the blending of this-world with the hereafter in elaborated funerary preoccupations, the daily and nocturnal voyage of Re, the hidden and revelational sides of Amun and in the Memphis Theology, the divine order of Ptah encompassing pre-creation (Ogdoad) and creation (Atum-Re and the Ennead) as well as the simultaneity between divine form (thought) and divine matter (speech). This tendency to transcend duality in a "tertium comparationis" goes back to the Early Dynastic Period and is a totality embracing paired contrasts or a harmony of opposites realized by a factor of transcendent significance (projected, in proto-rational fashion, on Pharaoh).

5. the four elements : the "enantia" or opposites were structured in four elements : Fire and Air were the active elements and both warm (Fire was dry and Air was moist), whereas Water and Earth were passive and both cold (Water was moist and Earth was dry). The elements figure as a paradigm in Empedocles (cf. De Generatione et Corruptione, 330a30), but in Ionic philosophy they were viewed as the "arche" of the universe. In the cosmogony of Memphis, as well as in astronomy, architecture & ritualism, these four elements were explicit. The origin of creation is the primordial Water before creation. The initiation and foundation of creation is the emergence of the primordial hill (Earth out of Water) struck by a beam of the Sun (Fire) petrifying (cf. the "Benben") the division between heaven and Earth (Air separating the two). Moreover, the Sun (Fire) was considered as the subtlest of the elements for responsible for light. The four elements were the cardinal points of the horizon placed around the sacred objects (pyramids, temples, thrones, coffins) and the pillars of creation. They played a central role in ritualism and were called the four "Sons of Horus", each protecting one of the funerary "Canopic" Jars.

6. the origin of the world : Democritus of Abdera (ca. 460 - 380/370 BCE) said that nothing comes out of nothing ("ex nihillo nihil fit") and hence the fundamental constituents of the universe must always have existed. This doctrine of the eternal nature of matter has been ascribed to Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE) who argued that because matter, motion and time are eternal, therefore the world is also eternal. He contradicts himself in his Physics (Book VIII 1.25) when he speaks of the world as caused (by the "unmoved mover"). In Ancient Egypt, the eternity of the fundamental constituents of the universe is attested as pre-creation, which perpetually escapes the continuous movement of rise, decay, death & rebirth, which is typical for the gods, goddesses & the rest of the natural order. The eternal repetition of the pantheon is contrasted with the everlastingness of Nun, chaos. The chaos-gods are inert but omnipresent (in the Netherworld) and in the deep of the Nile (cf. Amduat). Moreover, in the beginning, "Atum" is an "atom", that immediately splits to create the spatiotemporal world ... And this "first time" of the "splitting of singularity" is also a perpetual state, for daily, Atum-Re reemerges out of Nun. 

7. the demiurge or intermediate god in creation : this doctrine is ascribed to Plato (428/427 - 348/347 BCE), but was also taught by the Persians (Zoroaster) and by Pythagoras of Samos (ca .574 - after 500 BCE). For the latter, the universe consisted of two unities : an absolute (final) unity, from which the series of numbers or beings as such is derived, encompassing The All, and the One, i.e. the first ("1") in the series of derived numbers or beings. The One is opposed to and thus limited by plurality (the other numbers) and therefore a relative unity. In Plato's system, this distinction reoccurs as the difference between the demiurgical Idea of the Good (as the limit of limits) and the other Ideas. It was Porphyrius (the pupil of Plotinus) who called this Ultimate an Infinite Being beyond all finite being. Aristotle defined the supreme being as an "unmoved mover", creating all beings but remaining inexhaustible in the process ("actus purus") and always identical with itself. The distinction between :
   (a) an absolute unity, as ultimate cause, which remains identical with itself and unopposed to anything (but out of which "sui generis" creation unfolds) and 
   (b) a Demiurge, the first number or first cause, is made explicit in the Memphite theology by incorporating the Heliopolitan difference between pre-creation (with its Ogdoadic inertness rooted in Nun) and the "first time" of Atum-Re who creates himself and all the rest of existence out of his own body. Atum splits as soon as he emerges, and so his creativity is always tangential, for it is the Ennead of which he is the head which rules the affairs of the world : 
   {0} < 1 < 2, 3 < 4, 5 < 6, 7 & 8, 9.

8. the Divine order of things : from Pythagoras' mathematical views onwards, the Greeks were fascinated by the structure, organization & architecture of the world. Their temples testify their need to find the laws of life and completely fixate them in rigid, unchangable ideas (the Egyptian temples were never completed). The pre-Socratics explained the world through its elemental roots, whereas Plato organized the world of Ideas in a pyramidal fashion, with the Idea of the Good as a pyramidon at the top. This tendency to find an all-embracing "form" or "theoria" can be seen as the greatest accomplishment of the Greeks. In the theology of Memphis, Ptah is all-encompassing : he is pre-creation as Ptah-Nun, he is the first time as Ptah creating "in the form of Atum" and he is creation as the Ennead of Ptah manifesting the deities, nature & humanity. In that sense, Ptah represents the "formula of totality". The same kind of all-comprehensiveness occurs in the Ramesside theology of Amun-Re, who ruled both the hidden and the visible as well as being implicitly present in all gods & goddesses and in the hearts of every devout individual who took his god "in his heart" (Amun-Re is One and Many).

9. thought, word & creative command : It was Socrates (469 - 399 BCE) who introduced an intelligent cause in order to account for creation. Earlier, and in more proto-rational terms, Heraclitus had speculated that the hidden harmony of nature (reproducing concord from oppositions) rules all things together with the divine law ("dikê") and universal reason ("logos"). Plato speculated that the world was endowed with a perfect soul, acting as a mediator between the Ideas and the natural world, causing life, motion, order & knowledge (Timaeus, 30 - 35). In the Memphis Theology the "logos"-section testified that the Egyptians were aware of the creative command of thoughts ( in or Ptah's mind) and words (on ,  the tongue) before the Greeks coined the word "nous" (first used by Anaxagoras, ca. 500 - 428 BCE). The magical sources confirm this (cf. "heka" or "word of power"). Ptah created everything with his thoughts and creative commands. In Ramesside theology, Amun-Re was called the "Ba" (soul) of the world.

These correspondences suggest the learned Archaic Greeks took over & reworked (linearized) many components of the mythical, pre-rational & proto-rational layers of the cognitive semantics of the Memphites. First as their own proto-rational structures (the pre-Socratic materialists & number symbolists) and later as part of a rational explanation of the universe and man (the Classical Period of Plato and Aristotle).

3.3 Pythagoras of Samos : the mystery of the holy & sacred decad.

The Ionian naturalists (materialists) were individuals, and although Anaximander had Thales as a teacher, no "school" emerged after their death. With Pythagoras (ca. 580 BCE, island of Samos, Ionia  - ca. 500, Metapontum, Lucania), this son of an engraver of gems, we encounter the first Greek "school" of thought, a teaching in which religion, mysticism, mathematics and philosophy were allowed to interpenetrate each other and orchestrate a totally new symphonic whole, which will have a decisive influence on Greek thought as well as on Greek architecture. This was so unique, that Pythagorism may well be called the second major orientation in pre-Socratic philosophy next to Milesian materialism as a whole. 

According to tradition, the very word "philosophy" was coined by Pythagoras, who described himself as a "philo-sophos", a "lover" of wisdom. With his school, the scope of the Milesian "sophoi" was dramatically enlarged by the introduction of metaphysics, mystical experience and the philosophy of mathematics (including Pythagorean numerology). These speculative considerations took place "next to" physical inquires into the nature of all possible beings. With his emphasis on numbers and the theology of arithmetic (cf. Nicomachus of Gesara's The Theology of Arithmetic, ca. 100 CE), Pythagoras completed mathematics, for a complete study of geometry was taken for granted (for part of the "know-how" of the Milesian "sophoi").

The combination of geometry and arithmetic, was called the "tetraktys" (from "tetra", "four"), after the form of a four-tiered triangular patters of ten dots, the sacred symbol upon which Pythagorean Oats were sworn, and which probably had its origin in the arrangements of pebbles used to study mathematics. It is "holy", because of its summarizing manifestation of completion. It is "sacred", because it contains a secret which is kept out of sight of the inepti ...

TETRAKTYS - ultimate sacred number
"delta" shaped form (cf. "deka", ten) in four ("tetra") rows
directly influenced Hebrew qabalah and its 10 "sephiroth"
as well as the structure of the 4 qabalistic worlds

Unfortunately, none of the writings of Pythagoras have survived, and Pythagoreans invariably supported their doctrines by indiscriminately citing their master's authority. It is difficult to distinguish his teachings from those of his disciples, neither legends from historical fact. However, he is credited with the theory of the functional significance of sacred numbers in the objective world and in music (obtained by stopping a lyre string at various points along its length - the octave (2: 1), the fifth (3: 2) and the fourth (4: 3)). Other discoveries often attributed to him, like the incommensurability of the side and diagonal of a square, and the Pythagorean theorem stating the square of the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle equals in area to the sum of the squares of the other two sides (well-known in Egypt and Mesopotamia), were probably developed only later by the Pythagorean school. 

Diogenius Laërtius also tells us Pythagoras entered the Egyptian temples and learned the secrets of their gods. This is a remarkable testimony. The Egyptian gods were hidden from sight. Nobody, except Pharaoh and his appointed priests, could enter the "holy of holies" and face the deity. There was no communication between the deities and humans, for gods communicate only with gods. In the Late New Kingdom, common people took Amun "in their heart" and the Hidden Supreme heard their prayers & supplications ... Does the fact that Pythagoras entered parts of the inner spaces of the temple (decorated with the grand story of the pantheon), not make it likely he had learned how to read hieroglyphs and had satisfied the discipline of an Egyptian priesthood in decline ? Not to say he had become an Egyptian priest, but a wide variety of functions were in existence in Egyptian temples and some of them allowed access to areas which revealed much to those able to read the sacred writing, the "words of the gods" (cf. "lector" priest of the "House of Life" - in the Late Period Memphis, Sais and Bubastis had major libraries).

Iamblichus writes Pythagoras buried Thales and knew Anaximander before he stayed 22 years in Egypt and was initiated in the teachings of the priests of Thebes (plurality & unity of the Divine) and the doctrine of the resurrection of Osiris (the immortality of the soul). He would have received the sign of the winged disk in gold on his thigh, so that he was called "chrysomeros", or "he of the golden thigh". When the Persian Cambyses conquered Egypt in 525 BCE, he was made captive and brought to Chaldea. There he studied with the "magoi" for 12 years and learned about numbers and music. Other authors claimed he encountered Zarathoustra (being baptized in the Euphrate) and travelled to India were he met Gautama the Buddha (and was taught the doctrine of the "transmigration", i.e. reincarnation ?). The teachings drew a large following in the Greek colony of Croton in southern Italy, were he went to live. A kind of Freemasony "avant la lettre" rose among the aristocracy. It was a fraternity with Pythagoras as its "master". Its members had a lot of political power (based on "areté" and "ponós", excellence and effort), but were eventually massacred in a riot long after Pythagoras had died. The followers spread the principles and caused Pythagorism (or "Pythagoreanism") to become part of the Greek world. Iamblichus quotes his master, who had said : "number is the rule of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and demons".

In all, the various accounts draw a cosmopolitan picture of Pythagoras. He was the first Greek philosopher in the universal sense of the word, for all beings were part of his reflection. His interests go further than the physical doctrines of the Milesians and for the first time in Greek history, philosophy, mathematics & religion were put in one system of thought.

The problem of describing Pythagorism is complicated by the fact the surviving picture is far from complete, being based chiefly on a small number of fragments from the time before Plato and on various discussions in authors who wrote much later - most of whom were either Aristotelians or Neoplatonists. In spite of these historical uncertainties, the contribution of Pythagorism to Western culture has been significant and therefore justifies the effort, however inadequate, to depict what its teachings may have been.

Three levels may be discerned :

1. original teachings of Pythagoras ;

2. Pythagoras in Plato and Aristotle ;

3. teachings & influence of the Pythagorean school.

The character of original Pythagorism is controversial, and the conglomeration of disparate features it displayed is intrinsically confusing. Its fame rests, however, on some very influential ideas, and likely most of these prevailed in the school of Croton :

• the metaphysics of number and the conception that reality, including music and astronomy, is, at its deepest level, mathematical in nature : Pythagoras' sufficient ground is not a cosmic substance but an inner organization or structure coupled with a liberating, salvic intentions, albeit ascetical & philosophical ;

• the use of philosophy as a means of spiritual purification : a lover of wisdom is more than an intelligent person aware of problems and their solutions, for his persuit of wisdom must be a window to the immortal soul, the light of which draws him near to the original and fundamental level of reality : the mathematical order of being which whispers a hidden, mysterious language of silence, with a code available to the initiate only ; 

• the heavenly destiny of the soul and the possibility of its rising to union with the divine : Pythagoras is not satisfied with the mundane, immanent perspective, for the Pythagorean philosopher is before all the rest a lover of unity and its experience, which implies transcendence, trance, osmosis etc. ; 

• the appeal to certain symbols, sometimes mystical, such as the "tetraktys", the golden section, and the harmony of the spheres : symbols are the residu of spiritual experiences and contain a code to trigger co-relative experiences later ; 

• the Pythagorean theorem : mathematics and the solution of particular problems are the "purest" way to encounter the immortal soul, for its language is that of sacred number ; 

• the demand members of the order shall observe a strict loyalty and secrecy : the order is a private affair and has no "outer order".

What could Pythagoras have learned from the priest of Memphis and Thebes ?

• the unity of the divine : the absolute is One and Millions, invisible by nature and manifest in nature's forms ;

• the rule of truth and justice : all actions have to be weighed on the balance of truth to measure their order ;

• the order of creation : the cosmos unfolded as a series of numbers : 0 > 1 > 2 & 3 > 4 & 5 > 6, 7, 8, 9 ;

• the sacrality of "10" : Pharaoh, "son of Re", completes the Ennead + 1 = "10" order ;

• the creativity of thought and speech : the cosmos as conceived in the "mind" of the absolute ;

• geometrical solutions to practical problems : mathematical papyri testify Egypt's elementary abilities ;

• the magic of symbols : sacred script and ritual speech have powers beyond their physical form ;

• the rule of silence : the Egyptian gods and their priests were out of sight and hidden - silence was gold ;

• the harmony of opposites : all fundamental oppositions are bridged by a harmonic "third" ;

• the symbolism of numbers : each natural number (0 - 10) has "inner" meanings, purposes and relations.

There probably never existed a strictly uniform system of Pythagorean philosophy and religious beliefs, even if the school did have a certain internal organization. Pythagoras appears to have taught by pregnant, cryptic "akousmata" ("something heard") or "symbola". His pupils handed these on, formed them partly into Hieroi Logoi ("Sacred Discourses"), of which different versions were current from the 4th century BCE on, and they interpreted them according to their convictions.

Although variations occur, a striking similarity prevails between the Egyptian, Greek and Hebrew numerologies. The qabalah was influenced by Pythagorism (Barry, 1999) and Pythagoras probably studied Theban numerology (cf. the headings of the Hymns to Amun) :

* this a tentative list of correspondences, based on a wide range of Egyptian texts

Plato mentions Pythagoras only once (Republic, X.600). No details are given about the "Pythagorean way of life", which he compares with Homer. The Pythagorean teachings were obviously popular enough for Plato not to bother to discuss them. Not so for his pupil Aristotle, who wrote :

"Pythagoreans applied themselves to  mathematics, and were the first to develop this science ; and through studying it they came to believe that its principles are the principles of everything. And since numbers are by first nature among these principles, and they fancied that they could detect in number, to a greater extent than in fire and earth and water, many analogues dof what is and comes into being-such and such a property of number being justice,. and such and such soul or mind, another opportunity, and similarly, more or less, with all the rest - and since they saw further that the properties and ratios of the musical scales are based on numbers, and since it seemed clear that all other things have their whole nature modelled upon numbers, and that numbers are the ultimate things in the whole physical universe, they assumed the elements of numbers to be the elements of everything, and the whole universe to be a proportion or number."
Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, v. 1-3, 985b.

In  the 4th century BCE, Plato's inclination toward Pythagorism created a tendency -manifest already in the middle of the century in the works of his pupils- to interpret Platonic concepts as originally Pythagorean. Most of the literary sources ultimately hark back to the environment of Plato and Aristotle. Later, Neoplatonism, which developed in the third century CE, reworked Pythagorism. Although they claimed to reassert a true understanding of Plato, they took a syncretic approach and drew from other sources, such as Pythagorean number mysticism and the Hermetica.

By laying stress on certain inner experiences and intuitive truths revealed only to the initiated, Pythagorism seems to have represented a soul-directed, salvic idealism alien to the mainstream of pre-Socratic Greek thought, preoccupied with determining what the basic cosmic substance ("phusis") was. In contrast with Ionian naturalism, Pythagorism was akin to trends seen in mystery religions and mystical movements, such as Orphism, which often claimed to achieve a spiritual insight into the Divine origin and nature of the soul through intoxication. Yet, there are also aspects of it appearing to have owed much to the more sober, "Homeric" philosophy of the Ionians, especially regarding ascesis and the importance of mathematics. 

Indeed, the Pythagoreans displayed an interest in metaphysics (the nature of being), as did their naturalistic predecessors, though they claimed to find its key in mathematical form rather than in any cosmic substance. They accepted the essentially Ionian doctrines saying the world is composed of opposites and generated from something unlimited, but they added the idea of the imposition of limit (number) upon the unlimited and the sense of a musical harmony in the universe (a "music of the spheres", sounding to human ears as silence - cf. Aristotle, De Caelo, II.9). Again, like the Ionians, they devoted themselves to astronomical and geometrical speculations. Combining, as it does, a theory of number with a numerology and a speculative cosmology with a theory of the deeper, more spiritual reaches of the soul, Pythagorism interweaves religion and philosophy more inseparably than does any other movement in pre-Socratic thought. 

Pythagoras and his school are the first to develop a system of thought influenced by many disparate sources (Ionian, Egyptian, Persian, Indian). These elements were brought together, equilibrated and made to function as part of a larger whole. Just like the Ionian "sophoi" before him, his system of thought incorporates foreign sources and transcends them using a Greek mode of thought. However, Pythagoras' thought is scholarly, i.e. focused on the development of a school of thought. The same process is at work in the Corpus Hermeticum, written from the first to the third century CE but going back to Alexandrian sources (ca. 100 BCE ?). Here, Ancient Egyptian, Jewish and Greek philosophies are combined and made to function is a larger, decontextualized form (Hermes as the "nous" of Atum, prefigurating Aristotle's "first intellect"). Apparently Greek thought is very able to recuperate bits and pieces of interesting material and then recombine it to form a rational whole. Ionian thought, Pythagorism and Hermetism are clear examples of this (even Plato is said to have written down the thoughts of Socrates).

3.4 The Greek pyramidion or the completion of Ancient thought.

► the Greek Renaissance was not exclusively endogenic

There is no evidence on mainland Greece to support the thesis that the fundamental cognitive leap forward (from Dorian to Archaic, from illiterate to literate) put into evidence by the history of Ancient Greek culture, namely the "reequilibration" which happened between 900 - 800 (unity in language) and 750 BCE (the reemergence of writing) -the so-called Greek Renaissance- was exclusively caused by factors in the autochtonous environments of these various Helladic peoples, on the contrary. The Greek Renaissance (in the Age of Revolution) as a whole, and the Greek Miracle (the birth of Greek philosophy) in particular, were not the sole product of cultural processes from within the "body" of Dorian and Early Archaic Greeks.

Their new, shared system of writing was non-Greek but Phoenician. The "techné" of their Dorian architecture was Egyptian. Crude leather was replaced by fine Egyptian papyrus. And because of the exceptional cultural ties between Miletus and Naukratis, let us conjecturet the Archaic Ionian philosophers, with Pythagoras in front, approbated most of their subject-matter in the incredible inductive storehouses of images kept in the libraries & temples of Egypt (as the Greek themselves proudly affirmed) as well as from oral teachings given by the Memphite & Theban priests themselves. Other influences also played, but Egypt won the prize of the most venerable culture.

► the Greek Renaissance was not exclusively exogenic

Nevertheless, by the end of the Dark Age, the Greek cultural form had persistent "Aryan", Indo-European characteristics of its own :

• linearization : "Mycenæan megaron", "geometrical designs", mathematical form, peripteros ;

• anthropocentrism : warrior leaders, individual aristocrats, poets, "sophoi" and teachers ;

• fixed vowels : the categories of the "real" sound are written down & transmitted ;

• dialogal mentality : the Archaic Greeks enjoyed talking, writing & discussing (with strong arguments) ;

• non-dogmatic religion : the Archaic Greeks had no sacred books and hence no dogmatic orthodoxy ;

• cultural affirmation : the Archaic Greeks were a "young" people who needed to affirm their identity ;

• cultural approbation & improvement : the Archaic Greeks accepted to be taught and were eager to learn.

The inventive, Greek adaptation of these strong direct influences, the linearization of the underlying ante-rational thoughts and eventually the rational universalization of ante-rationality itself, constituted the formalizing streak which characterized Hellas. Indeed, in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE, a fair number of technical processes and decorative motive of Mycenæan Art reappeared in Greece. They are probably reintroductions from the East, where they had been adopted in the days of the Mycenæan empire and kept alive throughout the Dark Age. Linear B was however never used again, but parts of the "old" Greek cultural form had survived and was presently seeking its renewal by good, strong & enduring examples : Phoenicia, Egypt, Mesopotamia.

"Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Bronze Age to Classical Greece was something less tangible, but quite prossibly inherited : an attitude of mind which could borrow the formal and hieratic arts of the East and transform them into something spontaneous and cheerful ; a divine discontent which led the Greek ever to develop and improve their inheritance." - Higgings, 1997, p.190 (my italics).

► the Greek Miracle : product of the formal attitude of the Greeks and Egyptian "wisdom"

The Archaic, pre-Socratic stratum of the "Greek Miracle" was itself layered :

• Milesian "arche", "phusis" & "apeiron" : the elemental laws of the cosmos are rooted in substance ;

• Pythagorian "tetraktys" : the elemental cosmos is rooted in numbers which form man, gods & demons ;

• Heraclitian "psuche" & "logos" : a quasi-reflective self-consciousness, symbolical & psychological ;

• Parmenidian "aletheia" : the moment of truth is a decision away from opinion ("doxa") entering "being" ;

• Protagorian "anthropos" : man is the measure of all things and the relative reigns.

Let us remind ourselves of a few dates :

• ca.670 BCE : Psammetichus I initiated linguistic exchanges (translators) ;

• ca.624 BCE : birth of Thales of Milete, who visited Egypt ;

• 570 BCE : under Amasis (dies in 526 BCE), Neukratis became an exclusive Greek trading centre ;

• ca. 580 BCE : birth of Pythagoras, who studied in Egypt to be well received in its temples ;

• ca. 540 - 530 BCE : Dorian "old" Temple of Hera, Poseidonia, erected ;

• ca. 500 : death of Pythagoras ;

• 478 BCE : end of the Archaic Age (creation of the Delian League).

The Egyptian heritage could have influenced individual Greeks from 670 BCE onwards. Thales of Milete being the first Greek "sophoi" who visited Egypt and who was allowed to study the pyramids, geometry and probably parts of Egyptian religion, like the mythical notion of the primordial ocean ("Nun") as the fundamental, unchanging root or reality out of which all of creation emerged (a story as old as Egypt itself). Probably also in Egypt did Thales lean about the "Saros" period between eclipses, for Chaldean astronomy & astrology had been recently introduced into Egypt after the Assyrian invasion. It is clear, as Iamblichus explains, that this practical knowledge was approved by the Milesians, who knew Thales had not received his education in Greece. In his homeland, he became famous for feats Egyptians and Bablylonians had done. The opportunistic, intelligent and inquiring mentality of Thales, as well as his ability to approbate, adapt and change the set of inductive parameters, were of course truly Greek.

With Amasis and the exclusive position of Neukratis, a new period was initiated. And a few decades later, Pythagoras (already famous in Greece) was brought before Pharaoh, who decided the lad could study with the priests of Thebes. Likely the priests of Memphis were the first to take him in charge. Did he learn Egyptian from them ? The length of his stay, as well as the religious orientation of the first Greek "philo-sopher", points to a training under Egyptian priests. The secrecy, the heavenly goal of the immortal soul as well as the holy and sacred nature of the "decad" are truly Egyptian. Pythagoras also assimilated Chaldean (music) teachings, Vedic & Buddhist notions (like the transmigration from elemental being to god - cf. Buddhism's "wheel of dharma"), evidencing the adaptability of the Greek mind.

How many classical historians of philosophy mention that Egypt had developed its own sapiental literature, Memphite ethics and verbal philosophy, albeit in proto-rational terms ? That when Thales and Pythagoras visited Egypt, their Memphite counter-parties were highly educated and intellectually skilled men ? That cognitively, they had the same proto-rational inclinations as these Early Archaic Greeks ? The notions of "truth" ("maat") and "wisdom" ("saa") were essential to the Memphites, who were only willing to share their information, if Pharaoh commanded so AND the pupil was intelligent enough to learn Egyptian, both hieratic and hieroglyphic. Tradition claimed Pythagoras was the first to satisfy both conditions, for in the eyes of Polycrates he was already an exceptionally gifted individual.

Thales and Pythagoras represent the two sides of the Ionian experience : independent physical inquiry (Thales) and metaphysics of number (Pythagoras). This experience, which is truly Greek, had as catalyst the approbation of Egyptian and Bablyonian age-old inductive insights, forming a traditional proto-rational system of operational and efficient relationships, variables and constants. Indeed, the Greek words "nous" ("mind, thinking, perceiving") and "noés" ("perceive, observe, recognize, understand"), could be derived from the Egyptian "nu" ("nw"), "to see, look, perceive, observe" :

"NU", "nw", determinative for action with eyes - XXXth Dynasty
similar, earlier and complexer forms (with different determinatives) for :
to keep guard over, to watch, to tend, intention, care for something, shepherd, guide
supposed origin of the Greek "noés" and "nous"

► Greek philosophy and the modes of thought

Shabaka Stone : line 53, retrograde writing (hieroglyphs in red are reconstructed)

There comes into being in the mind : It is as the image of Atum.  There comes into being by the tongue : It is as the image of Atum. Ptah is the very great, who gives life to all the gods and their Kas. All of this in this mind and by this tongue.

The modes of thought described elsewhere can also be applied to the becoming of the Classical Greek mental form, which, contrary to the Egyptian, was able to realize the "formal" mode as a collective and become the cornerstone of Classical Greek civilization, which stabilized thought in the rational mode of cognition :

To think the difference between Greek proto-rationality and the traditions of "Antiquity", is to allow the Greek "mind" and its perceptions its own characteristics beyond the ante-rational civilizations which had celebrated their apogees before the Archaic Greeks (from Neolithicum to the truncated pyramids of proto-rationality). The stern architecture of the Mycenæans and the "megaron" of their warrior-like, pre-rational mental attitudes, restricting their protective interest to their own hill-top, are the earliest traces of the "geometrizing" and "linearizing" tendencies of the Greeks. In the epics, the military heroism of these leaders was idealized. 

The influence of the non-Greek, Minoan culture on the Mycenæan empire was unmistaken. The stern Greek was inspired by African high-culture. Likewise, the Archaic Greeks, recovering their cultural unity after centuries of decay, opened the doors to the East to educate and emancipate themselves. They were received in Egypt ca. 670 BCE. Ca.150 years later, the Greeks manifested the "Dorian" standard, as well as realized the luxury to entertain a series of Milesian "sophoi" and a Pythagorean school of spiritual philosophy. The expression : "the Greek Miracle" does perhaps refer less to origin as to speed.

The presence of an alphabet explains the fundamental schism between the "old" proto-rationality of the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians, on the one hand, and that of the Archaic Greeks, on the other. The Greeks were able to fixate referential meaning by introducting a completely new written feature : fixed vowels. In the old systems, the vowels were not recorded, and so essential categorial information was lost. Moreover, their "geometrizing" mental attitude stood in sharp contrast with the "harmonizing" mentality of the Egyptians, who never decontextualized their meanings and had eternalized a difficult pictoral script and various grammars (cf. Assmann's "visuelle Begriffsbildung"). Although not theoretical, the Egyptians had accumulated a gigantic number of inductive statements (in terms of practical proto-conceptual procedures). Most likely by "trial and error", they had arrived at operational solutions, from which the Greeks abstracted the "universal rule", enabling them to eventually "adjust" the procedures. 

► the capstone of proto-rationality

The most difficult operation, after an Egyptian pyramid was finished, was the raising and placing of a capstone or pyramidion. This was made of granite or basalt, and was placed on the apex. An inscription at the pyramid of Queen Udjebten (VIth Dynasty, consort of Pepi II), refers to a gilded capstone, which suggests these stones were at times overlaid with gold or electrum (an alloy of gold and silver). The finest pyramidion is the one of Pharaoh Amenemhet III (XIIth Dynasty). All four sides bear inscriptions in which the invoked deities are associated with the cardinal points of the compass. The pyramidion was the first to catch the rays of the Sun and represented, in a practical, pictoral way, the concept of resurrection and personified the creator Atum.