‘The direct influence
of Ancient Egyptian literature on Archaic Greece has never been fully
acknowledged. Greek philosophy (in particular of the Classical Period) has
-especially since the Renaissance- been understood as an excellent standard
sprung out of the genius of the Greeks, the Greek miracle. Hellenocentrism was
and still is a powerful view, underlining the intellectual superiority of the
Greeks and hence of all cultures immediately linked with this Graeco-Roman
heritage, such as (Alexandrian) Judaism, (Eastern) Christianity but also Islam
(via Harran and the translators). Only recently, and thanks to the
critical-historical approach, have scholars reconsidered Greek Antiquity, to
discover the “other” side of the Greek spirit, with its popular Dionysian and
elitist Orphic mysteries, mystical schools (Pythagoras), chorals, lyric
poetric, drama, proze and tragedies.
Nietzsche, who noticed
the recuperation of Late Hellenism by the Renaissance and the Age of
Enlightenment, simplistically divided the Greek spirit into two antagonistic
tendencies : the Apollinic versus the Dionysian. For him, Apollo was a metaphor
for the eternalizing ideas, for the mummification of life by concepts, good
examples and a life “hereafter”, “beyond” or “out there”. Dionysius was the
will to live in the present so fully & intensely as possible, experiencing
the “edge” of life and making an ongoing choice for that selfsame life, without
using a model that fixated existence in differentiating categories. A life here
and now, immanent and this-life.
And what about Judaism
? The author(s) of the Torah avoided the confrontation with the historical fact
that Moses, although a Jew, was educated as an Egyptian, and identified Pharaoh
with the Crocodile, who wants all things for himself. However, the Jews of the
Septuagint, the Second Temple and the Sacerdotal Dynasties were thoroughly
Hellenized, and they translated “ALHYM” (Elohim) as “Theos”, thereby confusing
Divine bi-polarity (kept for the initiates). It is precisely this influence of
Greek thought on Judaism which triggered the emergence of revolutionary sects
(cf. Qumran), solitary desert hermits and spirito-social communities, seeking
to restore the “original” identity of the Jewish nation, as it had been embodied
under Solomon (and the first temple), and turned against the Great Sanhedrin of
the temple of Jeruzalem.
Ancient Egyptian
civilization was so grand, imposing and strong, that its impact on the Greeks
was tremendous. In order to try to understand what happened when these two
cultures met, we must first sketch the situation of both parties. This will
allow us to make sound correspondences.
“Herodotus and other
Greeks of the fifth century BC recognized that Egypt was different from other
‘barbarian’ countries. All people who did not speak Greek were considered
barbarians, with features that the Greeks despised. They were either loathsome
tyrants, devious magicians, or dull and effeminate pleasure-seeking
individuals. But Egypt had more to offer ; like India, it was full of old and
venerable wisdom.”
Matthews & Roemer,
2003, pp.11-12.
What exactly did the
Greeks incorporate when visiting Egypt ? They surely witnessed (at the earliest
in ca. 570 BCE, when Naukratis became the channel through which all Greek trade
was required to flow by law) the extremely wealthy Egyptian state at work and
may have participated, in particular in the areas they were allowed to travel,
in the popular festivals and feasts happening everywhere in Egypt (the
Egyptians found good religious reasons to feast with an average of once every
five days).
In his Timaeus (21-23),
Plato (428/427 – 348/347 BCE) testified the Egyptian priests of Sais of Pharaoh
Amasis (570 – 526 BCE) saw the Greeks as young souls, children who had received
language only recently and who did not keep written records of any of their
venerated (oral) traditions. In the same passage of the Timaeus, Plato
acknowledges the Egyptians seem to speak in myth, “although there is truth in
it.” According to a story told by Diogenius Laertius (in his The Lives of the
Philosophers, Book VIII), Plato bought a book from a Pythagorean called
Philolaus when he visited Sicily for 40 Alexandrian Minae of silver. From it,
he copied the contents of the Timaeus … The Greeks, and this is the hypothesis
we are set to prove, linearized major parts of the Ancient Egyptian
proto-rational mindset. Alexandrian Hermetism was a Hellenistic blend of
Egyptian traditions, Jewish lore and Greek, mostly Platonic, thought.
Later, the influence of
Ptolemaic Alexandria on all spiritual traditions of the Mediterranean would
become unmistaken. On this point, I agree with Bernal in his controversial
Black Athena (1987).
“In the first place we
find the survival of Egyptian religion both within Christianity and outside it
in heretical sects like those of the Gnostics, and in the Hermetic tradition
that was frankly pagan. Far more widespread than these direct continuations,
however, was the general admiration for Ancient Egypt among the educated
elites. Egypt, though subordinated to the Christian and biblical traditions on
issues of religion and morality, was clearly placed as the source of all ‘Gentile’
or secular wisdom. Thus no one before 1600 seriously questioned either the
belief that Greek civilization and philosophy derived from Egypt, or that the
chief ways in which they had been transmitted were through Egyptian
colonizations of Greece and later Greek study in Egypt.”
Bernal, 1987, p.121, my
italics.
Recently, Bernal has
advocated a “Revised Ancient Model”. According to this, the “glory that is
Greece”, the Greek Miracle, is the product of an extravagant mixture. The
culture of Greece is somehow the outcome of repeated outside influence.
“Thus, I argue for the
establishment of a ‘Revised Ancient Model’. According to this, Greece has
received repeated outside influence both from the east Mediterranean and from
the Balkans. It is this extravagant mixture that has produced this attractive
and fruitful culture and the glory that is Greece.”
Bernal, in O’Connor
& Reid, 2003, p.29.
Bernal apparently
forgets that Greek recuperation is also an overtaking of ante-rationality by
rationality, a leaving behind of the earlier stage of cognitive development
(namely mythical, pre-rational and proto-rational thought). The Greeks had
superior thought, and this “sui generis“. Hence, Greek civilization cannot be
seen as the outcome of an extravagant mixture. The mixture was there because
the Greeks were curious and open. They linearized the grand cultures of their
day, and Egypt had been the greatest and oldest culture.
“Most of the names of
the gods may have arrived in Greece from Egypt, but by Herodotus’ own day, as a
result of receiving gods from other peoples (Poseidon from the Libyans, other
gods from the Pelasgians and so on), the Greeks have clearly overtaken the
Egyptians in their knowledge of the gods, if they have not indeed discovered
all the gods worth discovering.”
Harrison, in Matthews
& Roemer, 2003, p.153.
On the one hand, Greek
thinking successfully escaped from the contextual and practical limitations
imposed by an ante-rational cognitive apparatus unable to work with an abstract
concept, and hence unable to root its conceptual framework in the “zero-point”,
which serves as the beginning of the normation “here and now” of all possible
coordinate-axis, which all run through it (cf. transcendental logic). The
mental space liberated by abstraction, discursive operations and formal laws
was “rational”, and involved the symbolization of thought in formal structures
(logic, grammar), coherent (if not consistent) semantics (linguistic &
technical sciences) and efficient pragmatics (administration, politics,
socio-economics, rhetorics).
Because of the Greek
miracle of abstraction, rationality and ante-rationality were distinguished,
equating the latter with the “barbaric” (i.e. coming from “outside” Greece and
its colonies) or seeking the inner meaning of Egyptian religion (i.e. the wise
men who studied in Egypt and later the infiltration of Greeks in the
administrative, scribal class). Although the inner sanctum of the temples of
Ptah, Re and Amun must have remained closed (excepts perhaps for exceptional
Greeks like Pythagoras), the Greeks adapted to and rapidly assimilated Egyptian
culture and its environment.
“In addition to the
tangible exchange of objects and good, from the time of Solon there appears to
have been a certain kind of abstract intellectual contact. There survive a
growing number of works written in Greek which demonstrate some measure of
familiarity with Egypt and Egyptian thought or at least claim to have been
influenced by them. The list of authors of such works is impressive : Solon,
Hecataeus of Miletus, Herodotus, Euripides and Plato to name only the best
known.”
La’ada, in Matthews
& Roemer, 2003, p.158.
On the other hand, the
Greeks had no written traditions and so no extensive treasurehouse of
ante-rational, efficient knowledge (no logs). They had no libraries like the
Egyptians. In their Dark Age, literacy had dropped dramatically and only in
Ionia and Athens could pieces of Mycenæan culture be detected. The old language
(Linear B) was lost. At the beginning of the so-called Archaic Period (starting
ca.700 BCE), the Greeks could not erect temples, had a new alphabet adapted
from the Phoenicians, no literature and very likely an oral culture, containing
legends, stories about the deities and grand, heroic deeds (such as recorded by
Homer & Hesiod, ca.750 BCE).
When their abstracting,
eager and young minds got in touch with the age old cultural activity of the
Egyptians, the encounter was very fertile, enabling the Greeks to develop their
own intellectual & technological skills, and move beyond the various
examples of Egyptian ingenuity. They were able to deduce abstract “laws”
(major), allowing for connections to be made beyond the borders of context and
action (minor) and the application of the general to the particular
(conclusion). Moreover, the rich cosmogonies of Egyptian myth, the transcendent
qualities of Pharaoh, the moral depth of Egypt’s sapiental discourses and the
importance of verbalization in the Memphite and Hermopolitan schools were
readapted and incorporated into Greek philosophy, as so many other connotations
and themes, adapted by their Greek authors to their Helladic taste.
This complex interaction
between Greeks and Egyptians before and under the Ptolemies, allowed Alexandria
to become a major intellectual centre, home of native Egyptians, Greek priests
& scientists, Jewish scholars, Essenes and Hermetics alike. It continued to
be influential until the final curtain came down on it in 642 CE, when general
Amr Ibn Al As conquered Egypt for Caliph Omar, the second of the Islam’s Four
Pillar Caliphs. And so nearly nine hundred years of Graeco-Roman suzerainty had
come to and end.’
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