HERMES, THOTH, or Mercury

HERMES, THOTH, or Mercury, one of the secondary gods of Egypt, who received divine honours on account of his useful and extraordinary talents.

There is no personage in all antiquity more renowned than the Egyptian Hermes, who was sur-named Trismegistus, or Thrice-illustrious. He was the soul of Osiris's counsel and government; and is called by Sir Isaac Newton, his secretary. "Osiris," says he, "using the advice of his secretary Thoth, distributes Egypt into 36 nomes; and in every nome erects a temple, and appoints the several gods, festivals, and religions of the several nomes. The temples were the sepulchres of his great men, where they were to be buried and worshipped after death, each in his own temple, with ceremonies and festivals appointed by him; while he and his queen, by the names of Osiris and Iset, were to be worshipped in all Egypt: these were the temples seen and described by Lucian, who was himself an Egyptian, 1100 years after, and to be of one and the same age: this was the original of the several nomes of Egypt, and of the several gods and several religions of those nomes." And Diodorus Siculus tells us, that Mercury was honoured by Osiris, and afterwards worshipped by the Egyptians,

as a person endowed with extraordinary talents for every thing that was conducive to the good of society. He was the first who out of the coarse and rude dialects of his time formed a regular language, and gave appellatives to the most useful things: he likewise invented the first characters or letters, and even regulated the harmony of words and phrases: he instituted several rites and ceremonies relative to the worship of the gods, and communicated to mankind the first principles of astronomy. He afterwards suggested to them as amusements, wrestling and dancing; and invented the lyre, to which he gave three strings in allusion to the seasons of the year: for these three strings producing three different sounds, the grave, the mean, and the acute, the grave answered to winter, the mean to spring, and the acute to summer.

Among the various opinions of the several ancient writers who have mentioned this circumstance, and confined the invention to the Egyptian Mercury, that of Apollodorus is the most intelligible and probable. "The Nile, (says this writer), after having overflowed the whole country of Egypt, when it returned within its natural bounds, left on the shore a great number of dead animals of various kinds; and among the rest a tortoise, the flesh of which being dried and wasted by the sun, nothing was left within the shell but nerves and cartilages; and these being braced and contracted by desiccation, were rendered sonorous. Mercury, in walking along the banks of the Nile, happening to strike his foot against the shell of this tortoise, was so pleased with the sound it produced, that it suggested to him the first idea of a lyre, which he afterwards constructed in the form of a tortoise, and strung it with the dried sinews of dead animals." See LYRE.

It is generally imagined that there were two Thoths or Mercuries in Egypt, who lived at very remote periods, but both persons of great abilities. The Egyptians themselves distinguish two Thoths or Hermeses; and yet the histories of the first and second are as much confounded together, as those of Osiris and Sesostris. Div. Leg. book iv. sect. 5.

The Greek Christians had so high an opinion of the antiquity of the first Egyptian Hermes, who lived at Sais, that they supposed him and the antediluvian patriarch Enoch to have been the same person, and give to both the same inventions. We are told likewise, that Manetho extracted his history and dynasties of the Egyptians from certain pillars in Egypt, on which inscriptions had been made by Thoth or the first Mercury, in the sacred letters, before the flood! Vid. Dodwell Dissert. de Sacton. Fabric. Bib. Gr. Stilling-fleet. Orig. Sacr. et alios.

No less than 42 different works are attributed to the Egyptian Hermes by ancient writers; of these the learned and exact Fabricius has collected all the titles. It was usual for the Egyptians, who had the highest veneration for this personage, after his apotheosis, to have his works, which they regarded as their bible, carried about in processions with great pomp and ceremony; and the first that appeared in these solemnities was the chanter, who had two of them in his hands, while others bore symbols of the musical art. It was the business of the chanters to be particularly versed in the two first books of Mercury; one

Hermetical of which contained the hymns to the gods; and the other, maxims of government: 36 of these books comprehended a complete system of Egyptian philosophy; the rest were chiefly upon the subjects of medicine and anatomy.

These books upon theology and medicine are ascribed by Marsham to the second Mercury, the son of Vulcan, who, according to Eusebius, lived a little after Moses; and this author, upon the authority of Manetho, cited by Syncellus, regarded the second Mercury as the Hermes furnished Trismegistus. Enough has been said, however, to prove, that the Egyptian Mercuries, both as to the time when they flourished, and their attributes, were widely different from the Grecian Mercury, the son of Jupiter and Maia. See MERCURY.