Forgotten Ages Research

Sphinx Guardians—The Legacy of Thoth-Hermes

Product ID: HHR9

Report Topics:

• Was a significant part of the lost Library of Alexandria secretly transferred and hidden in the Hall of Records?
• Important clues preserved in Hermetic literature
• The story of Thoth-Hermes and the secret Brotherhood of his son Tat
• The link between Thoth-Hermes and Enoch
• The true builder of the Great Pyramid as part of the Hall of Records
• Greek, Roman and Egyptian sources testifying to the uninterrupted lineage of the Followers of Thoth stretching back thousands of years
• The Followers and the earliest organization of the Temples of Initiation along the Nile during Predynastic times

Full Report:

A portion of the wisdom the ancient Egyptians ascribed to Thoth-Hermes was said to have been written in books which survived to fairly late times. The Greek grammarian Pamphilius made a detailed study of sacred healing plants along the Nile, and noted that much of his information was derived from "books of the Egyptian Hermes." Iamblichus claimed that Hermes once had been the author of 20,000 books, while Manetho counted 36,000.

Clement of Alexandria, writing at the beginning of the Christian era, recorded that four major books of Thoth-Hermes were still extant in his day which were divided up into forty-two volumes.

Ten volumes on religious observance, called the Hieraticum, were for the priests of the god. Two other volumes preserved the hymns and chants of the musicians. Six more contained the medical knowledge of the Pastophoroi on the structure of the body, its diseases and cures, and instructions on surgery and drug applications. And finally the remainder of the volumes were a compendium of all the sciences and philosophies of the Egyptians.

Tragically, most of these books have been lost to us. The Emperor Diocletian, in the third century, feared the secret wisdom of the Egyptians might someday make them richer than Rome, so he ordered all their works on "magic and alchemy" destroyed.

Less than a hundred years later a Christian mob under the blessings of Archbishop Theophilus stormed the Library of Alexandria and burned a large quantity of the thousands of scrolls of "pagan" science, philosophy and literature contained therein. Since the "books of Hermes" were regarded as the quintessence of Egyptian thought, they most likely held a special place in the Library, and thus could have been lost with many other volumes to the fires of religious fanaticism.

However, there are stories that, before the mob broke into the Library complex, certain books were quickly taken out and secretly buried in ancient underground vaults somewhere in the desert, their location hidden by the "initiates of the Egyptian mysteries of the highest order." No doubt, because Initiates were involved, the books they chose to escape with would have been those most sacred to them, and there were none more important to them than the works of the Grand Initiator himself, Thoth-Hermes.

As for the burial, we know of only one place in Egyptian legend and history that was regarded as the repository of the most important documents of the land, the Hall of Records of Giza. Is it possible that the Hall today may still contain a portion of the vanished Library of Alexandria?

While much of the ancient writings remain lost to us, bits and pieces of the original philosophy and knowledge of Thoth-Hermes has managed to survive in a body of Greek and Latin literature which presently is known as the Corpus Hermeticum. Among the main works are the "Poimandres" or "Divine Pymander," the "Virgin of the World" and a multitude of "Fragments" and "Excerpts," quotes made by other authors from Hermetic manuscripts which no longer exist.

The early Church fathers generally accepted the Hermeticum as genuinely ancient and authoritative, while the later Renaissance scholars saw it as a valuable adjunct to Christianity. It was only in the nineteenth century during the heyday of "higher criticism" that questions were raised as to the authenticity of the Hermeticum as being truly representative of ancient Egyptian religion and philosophy.

Since the literature contains many parallels with Neoplatonic and Pythagorean thought, it was argued that the Hermeticum may have been a forgery composed by pagan authors in the early centuries of the present era in their stand against the rising tide of Christianity.

However, today much of the Hermeticum works have been placed upon firm foundation by new historical and critical research. It is possible to trace the essence of Hermetic philosophy all the way back to the ancient Egyptian religion through the study of the original hieroglyph inscriptions left to us from Dynastic times. As for the Platonic and Pythagorean content, we know now both these great men derived their teachings from the Egyptian Mystery Schools, so it is only natural there should be parallels between the Hermetic literature and the words of the Greek philosophers.

Though the Hermeticum is very fragmentary, it does preserve significant references to the history of Thoth-Hermes and his construction long ago of the Hall of Records. It appears that while the god's great knowledge in mundane matters remained in the hands of his priests and priestesses, the wisdom of more advanced sciences, technologies and spiritual truths he purposely hid for a future age, for a time when humankind would once again enter a Golden Age of higher awareness and learning. In an excerpt entitled "An Invocation of Lord Hermes" we find these words:

"Come to me, Lord Hermes, O you of many names, who knows the secrets hidden beneath the earth."

The "Sermon of Hermes" deals with the subject of the Renewal of Time, that all things contain within themselves the seed of rebirth into a cycle of a New Era. One sentence reads: "And there will be memorials of their handiworks upon the earth, leaving dim traces behind when cycles are renewed."

G. R. S. Mead, perhaps the best known interpreter and commentator of Hermetic literature, observed: "The thought of the writer is evidently turned back toward the past, to a time when a mighty race, devoted to growth and wisdom, lived on the earth and left great monuments of their wisdom in the works of their hands, dim traces of which were to be seen 'in the renewal of times.'

“This means to be a clear reference to the general belief that there were alternating periods of destruction, by fire and water, and of renewal. In Egypt the common belief was that the last destruction had been by water and flood. Before this Flood, there had been a mighty race of Egyptians, the race of Hermes, and that some dim traces of the mighty works of this bygone wisdom-loving civilization were still to be seen. I am, myself, strongly inclined to believe in this tradition, and I sometimes speculate as to the possibility of there being buried beneath one or more of the pyramids the remains of some prehistoric buildings perhaps also of pyramid shape, that have survived the Flood."

The most detailed accounts in Hermetic literature come to us from the "Virgin of the World," a lengthy work which takes the form of a lesson in higher mysteries given by the goddess Isis to her son Horus.

Significantly, the goddess portrays herself and her husband, Osiris, as once having been culture-bearers who brought to Egypt the arts of civilization from somewhere else. She described the land of the Nile in that remote period as inhabited by "savages." But through the gods' instructions, the primitive Egyptians learned the basics of culture, and were transformed into a highly civilized society.

According to Isis, chief among the early teachers, and from whom all the other gods derived their knowledge, was Thoth-Hermes. Long before the first Pharaohs, he ruled in Egypt with Osiris, acting as his prime minister and spokesman. Reiterated are Thoth-Hermes' attributes as the god of writing, geometry, astronomy, medicine, architecture and all the arts. But he is portrayed here not as an inventor, but rather as a keeper.

In the context of what is revealed in the remainder of the "Virgin of the World," this full spectrum of cultural knowledge was what Thoth-Hermes brought with him to Egypt from another more advanced civilization. Thoth-Hermes, along with Isis and Osiris, were guardians of a primordial Wisdom they attempted to impart to the prehistoric Egyptians.

While the "gods" shared some of their knowledge, other aspects were deliberately buried and kept secret. In the "Virgin of the World" we find these words:

"The sacred symbols of the cosmic elements, the secrets of Osiris, were hid away carefully. Hermes, before his return to Heaven, invoked a spell on them, and spoke these words. O holy books which have been made by my immortal hands, by incorruption's magic spell remain free from decay throughout eternity and incorrupt by time. Become unseeable, unfindable, from everyone whose foot shall tread the plains of this land, until old Heaven shall bring instruments for you, whom the Creator shall call His souls. Thus spake he, and laying the spells on them by means of his works, he shut them safe away in their rooms. And long has been the time since they were hid away."

The passage clearly describes a secret wisdom written in books, in symbols, contained in rooms, each room presumably possessing records classified by subject matter. A series of rooms suggests an orderly arrangement; that is, chambers branching off a central corridor system—hence a "hall of records." The key as to where these rooms are located is in the phrase Thoth-Hermes used: "Become unseeable, unfindable, from everyone whose foot shall tread the plains of this land."

In other words, the hall of rooms and its lost Hermetic knowledge is below ground, over which the multitude of the ages have walked, not knowing what lies beneath. In the same instance, Thoth-Hermes implied that the subterranean vaults are beneath one of the plains of Egypt. There are several flat stretches of land along the Nile, but of these the most notable is the high plateau plain of Giza.

As to who will find it, the god predicted that "instruments" would appear, or voice-pieces for the knowledge, individuals through whom the knowledge would have purpose. The words imply that it will not be people of greed or personal gain who will uncover the rooms, but instead will be those who will seek to use the wisdom selflessly.

The "Virgin of the World" also contains a prophecy by Thoth-Hermes that is directly linked with the knowledge he hid away, and suggests that the advances he described will serve as the necessary pre-requisites for understanding what is contained in the lost Hall. The god predicted that one day:

"Men will seek out the inner nature of space, where no man can walk, and they shall chase up into the heights, desiring to observe the nature of the motions in the Heaven. But these shall be but small things. For them nothing more remains than the remotest realms of Earth. Then they shall search and find out the Night, the farthest Night of all."

The first phrase, "men shall seek out the inner nature of space," sounds very much like our modern exploration of the atom and sub-atomic matter. "They shall chase up into the heights," also points to our modern age, with humans on the Moon and probes to the planets and beyond to the stars, "to observe the nature of the motions in the Heaven." But Thoth-Hermes foresaw that something greater will be discovered.

The builder of the Hall of Records had the foresight to know that our modern scientific and technological wonders would merely be "small things" compared with another breakthrough yet to occur for us. Humankind of our time, he declared, would think they have only the "remotest realms of Earth" left for them to explore.

But at that time they will find a new revelation when a new step will dramatically be taken: "They will search and find out the Night, the farthest Night of all." That time of revelation is now here.

The word "Night" is a code word, and other passages in the "Virgin of the World" directly associate "Night" with the god Osiris. Reading again what Thoth-Hermes said earlier would be found in the Hall of Records we find: "The sacred symbols of the cosmic elements, the secrets of Osiris." The word "Night" in the context of other descriptions in the work makes it clear that it does not refer to nighttime or even the blackness of space, though it is linked in the texts with what is called the Black Rite of Osiris.

"Night" is called a "light, though it be lesser than the Sun's." It is also said to have the property to "weave a web of rapid light." Another line states that the energy exists concurrently with "other mysteries, in turn that move in heaven, with ordered motions, and with periods of time, and with certain hidden influences, bestowing order on the things below (on the Earth) and co-increasing them."

Are the enigmatic "Night" and the "Black Rite of Osiris" somehow linked with the recently discovered existence of "dark matter" and "dark energy" that may compose as much as ninety percent of the known Universe?

Again, some form of energy appears to be described that plays an important role in the mechanics and inter-actions of the heavenly bodies. It was known in the past but has been lost to us now, yet is predicted to be rediscovered very shortly, not through scientific investigation but instead by the uncovering of a lost time capsule buried by a member of a prehistoric yet advanced civilization.

There was a second prophecy made by Thoth-Hermes in which he foresaw the present state of Egypt and the world, and portended a coming period of Transformation after which will dawn a new spiritual Age in which the mysteries of the Nile will play an important role once more. The prophecy is found in "A Treatise on Initiations" and says:

"A Time will come when it will seem that the Egyptians have adored the gods so piously in vain, and that all their holy invocations have been barren and unheeded. Divinity will quit the earth and return to heaven, forsaking Egypt, its ancient abode, and leaving the land widowed of religion and bereft of the presence of the gods.

"Strangers will fill the earth, and not only will sacred things be neglected, but more dreadful still, religion, piety, and the adoration of the gods will be forbidden and punished by the laws. Then, this earth, hallowed by so many shrines and temples, will be filled with sepulchers and with the dead.

"O Egypt! Egypt! There will remain of your religion only vague legends which posterity will refuse to believe; only words graven on stone will witness your devotion.

"To you I cry, O most sacred Nile river, to you I announce the coming of doom. Waves of blood, polluting your divine waters, shall overflow your banks; the number of dead shall surpass that of the living; and if, indeed, a few inhabitants of the land remain, Egyptians by speech, they will in manners be aliens.

"Then there will be impelling of all kinds of wicked enterprises; to war, to rape, to falsehood, to everything contrary to the nature of the soul. The earth will no longer be in equilibrium, the sea will no longer be navigable, and in heaven the regular course of the stars will be troubled.

"Every holy voice will be condemned to silence, the fruits of the earth will become corrupt and she will be no more fertile; the very air will sink in stillness. Such will be the old age of the world; irreligion and disorder, lawlessness, and the confusion of good men.

"Then the Lord and Father, the sovereign God who rules the wide world, beholding the evil ways and actions of men, will arrest the misfortunes by the exercise of His divine will and goodness. And , in order to put an end to error and to the general corruption, He will consume it by fire, and by wars and epidemics.

"And therefore He will restore to it its primitive beauty so that once more it shall appear worthy of admiration and worship, and again a chorus of praise and of blessing shall celebrate Him Who has created and redeemed so beautiful a work.

"This rebirth of the world, this restoration of all good things, this holy and sacred rehabilitation of Nature will take place when the time shall come which is appointed by the divine and ever-eternal will of God, without beginning and always the same.

"And those to whom it shall be given to dominate the earth shall be sent forth and establish at the extremity of Egypt, in a place built toward the west, wither, by sea and by land, shall flow all the races of mortals. They shall be established in a great community upon the Libyan Hill."

What Thoth-Hermes has predicted here is, once the troubled times of the Present Age pass away, a special community will arise in Egypt in a place called the "Libyan Hill," and this will become a spiritual center for the world. One other clue we are given in the text as to the location of this Libyan Hill is that it is "close by" to the Nile waters.

The "Libyan Hill" is universally recognized as being the high Libyan plateau of the Sahara desert in western Egypt, which near the Nile becomes the Giza plateau marked by the Pyramids, the Sphinx and the Hall of Records. Giza itself is considered to be one of the highest elevations in all of Egypt and thus is certainly very much a prominent "hill." The gathering of a community in this area is very reminiscent of the prophecy from the "Virgin of the World" where Thoth-Hermes foresaw a future time when "instruments" or a select spiritual group will come forth to open the Hall of Records. The prophecies are in fact one and the same.

Another revelation revealed in the Hermetic literature is that, from the time of its burial twelve millennia ago, to the not too distant day when it will be uncovered, the Hall of Records has been watched over by a special group known as the Followers or Guardians.

In the "Virgin of the World" the goddess Isis spoke of those who followed after the reign of Thoth-Hermes in Egypt came to an end: "To him succeeded Tat, who was at once his son and heir, and afterwards also Asclepius-Imuth, according to the will of Ptah, and then all the rest who were to make inquiry of the faithful certitude of heavenly contemplation."

Tat was the son of Thoth-Hermes, and in many of the Hermetic fragments Thoth-Hermes is portrayed as the Instructor and Master Teacher, and Tat the Student and Initiate. But this association has a much broader application where Tat personifies, as Mead describes, "a younger race, beloved of Hermes, who were souls as yet too young to understand the true science face to face. They were apparently regarded as the Tat priesthood of our humanity."

This concept is confirmed by the text itself which states that after Tat came a long line of priests and priestesses, among them "Asclepius-Imuth" who was Imhotep, described as both a disciple and descendant of the prehistoric order.

To Tat and his successors Thoth-Hermes entrusted the care and safe-keeping of his hidden records. Again quoting from the "Virgin of the World" we read:

"Hermes then justified himself in the presence of those who surrounded him how that not even his own son (because of the newness of his youth) to him had been able to hand on the Perfect Vision. But at the rising of the Sun, I, Isis, perceived the hidden mysteries of the New Dawn, and I understood that the sacred symbols of the cosmic elements were safely sealed away. And Hermes's son remained as heir to all these knowledges."

The allusion to the goddess Isis observing the "hidden mysteries sealed away" in the direction of the rising sun is undoubtedly connected with the many legends and inscriptions which say that the Hall of Records lies in a line between the Sphinx, whose face originally was that of a woman, and the dawn light of the Nile.

As Tat was the son of Thoth-Hermes, so the succeeding members of the Followers also called themselves the "sons of Thoth" or the "sons of Hermes." Their very first task appears to have been to aid the Master of Initiation in the building of the Giza monuments. In the "Virgin of the World" Thoth-Hermes instructed both the other deities and his Followers in their appointed work: "'They shall read,' Hermes said, 'my mystic writings, and dividing them up into two parts, they shall keep hidden certain of them, and inscribe upon columns those which may be useful to men.'"

The classical Iamblichus, in his treatise on Egyptian magic, referred to the "Hermetic Pillars" and stated that they, "were known by Pythagoras and Plato, and were the source of their philosophy." Marcellinus also spoke of the "ancient pillars of Hermes" that were built before the Deluge, which the "later sons of Hermes interpreted and wrote many volumes from this work." These same pillars were likewise mentioned by other classical writers such as Laertius, Dio Chrysostom and Achilles Tatius.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who attempted to correlate Egyptian legends with Hebrew tradition, wrote:

"The children of Seth were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies, and their order; and that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction, that the world at one time was to be destroyed by the forces of fire, and at another by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, one of brick, the other of stone.

"They inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in the case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind, and also inform them that there was another pillar of stone erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Syria, the other in Seriad, to this day."

The "children of Seth" are clearly the same as the "sons of Hermes" both in description and in their advanced wisdom. The "pillar of brick" is associated with "Syria."

In Josephus' day Syria was synonymous with the old Seleucid Empire that once existed east of Palestine and included the Tigris-Euphrates river valley of Mesopotamia. This was indeed the "land of bricks" as mud brick was the chief component of construction for the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians. These peoples' lands were filled with ziggurats or "great holy mountains," giant "pillars of brick" which in many ways rivaled the grandeur of the Egyptian pyramids. Unfortunately, most of these ziggurats Time has reduced to piles of earthen debris just as the ancient wisdom-keepers feared they would one day become.

The "pillar of stone" on the other hand is linked with "Seriad" or "Siriad." The name is based on Sirius the Dog Star, and both the Egyptian religion and calendar were firmly established on the annual rising of Sirius with the Sun denoting the flooding time of the Nile. "Siriad" then refers to Egypt, and its "pillar of stone" can be nothing less than the Great Pyramid. Josephus' description of it as a "pillar" was a reflection upon the Hebrew prophet Isaiah's words in the Book of Isaiah 19:19: "In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord."

The Pyramid stands at the border of the Libyan desert wastes of Egypt and also at the center of the quadrant of the Nile Delta region. Interestingly, Isaiah's prophecy echoes the forecast of Thoth-Hermes that the Pyramid and the rest of the Giza complex will someday be consecrated once again as a holy place, a shrine to the most ancient and sacred Wisdom.

It is equally significant that many references identify Thoth-Hermes with the Biblical patriarch Enoch who was also described as a man of great knowledge and ability. In the Hebrew the name Enoch means, "the devoted, the initiated into sacred knowledge, a teacher." Enoch was also the author of several books. According to Jewish tradition he received from Adam the secret wisdom which God had given him directly at the Creation, and Enoch in turn inscribed this knowledge on Emerald Tablets.

The medieval alchemists believed that Thoth-Hermes' greatest tomes on the nature of the elements were recorded on the Tabula Smaragdina, the "Tablet of Emerald."

In the Slavonic Book of Enoch we read that the patriarch journeyed to the four corners of the Earth. Thoth-Hermes was called the "Measurer of the Earth."

The Egyptian god was also the patron of astronomers. To Enoch the angel Uriel said, "All things have I revealed to you. You have seen the Sun, the Moon, and those which conduct the stars in heaven, which cause all their operations, seasons and arrivals and returns." We are also reminded here of the mysterious energy called the "Night" which controls the movements of the heavenly orbs, which has yet to be fully rediscovered in our present day.

With these similarities it is not surprising to also find Enoch's name associated with the Great Pyramid and Hall of Records. The fourteenth century traveler Ibn Batuta stated: "The pyramids of brick and stone were constructed by Hermes, the Thrice Great, who is the same as Enoch, and also called Esdris, Surid. In them he preserved the arts and sciences and other intelligences from before the Flood."

Josephus recorded further that Enoch built an underground temple of nine vaults, one beneath the other, placing within tablets of gold. His son, Methuselah, also worked on the construction project (an echo of the dedication of Thoth-Hermes' son, Tat, to the completion of the Hall of Records), putting in the walls of the vaults according to his father's plan.

As Manly P. Hall noted from ancient traditions, these secret vaults were arranged as the Nine Spheres of the ancient Mysteries and the Nine Sacred Strata of the Earth, "through which the initiate must pass to reach the flaming Spirit dwelling in its central core." In Masonic symbolism, Hall reveals, Enoch is portrayed as the Master who feared that all knowledge of the sacred Mysteries would be destroyed at the time of the Flood, and therefore erected two columns, one inscribed with esoteric glyphs and the other giving directions that a certain distance away was buried a hidden chamber of priceless treasure. The Freemasons, according to Hall, predict that someday a man will locate this buried vault and that he will be, "an initiate after the order of Enoch."

We also find allusions to the "two pillars" and the Followers among other ancient sources. The Sebennyte priest Manetho, who composed one of the earliest chronologies of Egypt's rulers, told how he received much of his information on the "age of the gods" from "engraved columns set up in the Seriadic land of Thoth, the first Hermes." According to Syncellus, quoting Manetho, "After the Flood the engravings were translated from the sacred language into the then common tongue, but still written in hieroglyphic characters, and stored away in books, by the second Hermes (Tat and his Followers), in the inner shrines of the temples of Egypt."

The Phoenician historian Sanchuniathon similarly wrote: "And Usous consecrated two stelae or pillars. These things the Cabiri, the seven sons of Sydyk, and their eighth brother, Asclepius, first set down in memoirs as the god Taatus commanded them." Once again, we find reference to Thoth-Hermes, Tat or "Taatus," and "Sydyk" or the Sirius of the Egyptians. And too we find mention of a line of "sons" as the preservers of the ancient Wisdom, all associated with the "pillar" of the Pyramid.

In tracing the existence of the Followers in the past we find an invisible thread running through both Predynastic and Dynastic Egypt, and beyond.

During the "age of the gods," before the great Flood and destruction of Atlantis about 10,000 B.C.E., the very first Initiates of the Followers appear to have graduated at the time when the Pyramid and Hall of Records were not yet finished so that they could aid in the construction. This was the time when the Initiation process was in its newness, its purest form, under the auspices of the Master Teacher Thoth-Hermes himself.

Eduard Schure, in his work The Great Initiates, observed:

" Hermes is the name which designates a man, a caste and a god at the same time. As a man, Hermes is the first great initiator of Egypt; as a caste, Hermes is the priesthood, the depository of esoteric traditions; as a god, Hermes is the planet Mercury, including in its sphere a category of spirits and divine initiators; in brief Hermes presides in the supernatural region of celestial Initiation. In the spirit of economy of the world, all these things are bound together by secret affinities and by an invisible thread.

"The name Hermes is a talisman which sums them up, a magic sound which calls them forth. Hence its prestige. The Greeks, disciples of the Egyptians, called him Hermes Trismegistos, or three times great, because he was considered king, legislator and priest. He typifies a period when priesthood, magistracy and royalty were united in a single governing body. Manetho's Egyptian chronology calls this period the reign of the gods."

As their primary symbol of deepest meaning the Sphinx stood before the first Initiates, the perfect image in its original form--an archetype of the great mystery that was themselves. As Schure observes: "The Sphinx, the first creation of Egypt, became the latter's principle symbol, its distinctive mark. The oldest human priesthood carved it, a picture of calm and of the awe-inspiring majesty of nature."

Though the great founding work was accomplished by the first Initiates, there is evidence that Thoth-Hermes left Egypt before the Giza complex was entirely done.

Sir Flinders Petrie, in his explorations of the Great Pyramid, discovered in its structure a curious mixture of brilliant workmanship in certain aspects and roughness in others. He concluded: "The original architect, a true master of accuracy and fine methods, must have ceased to superintend the work when it was but half done."

Whatever the purpose was, Thoth-Hermes' sudden departure is not given. All we are told in the "Vision of Hermes" is:

"He saw the totality of things, and having seen he understood, and having understood he had the power to manifest and to reveal. What he thought, he wrote, he hid in great measure, keeping wisely silent and speaking at the same time so that all the world to come might seek these things. And thus, having commanded his brothers to act like participants in a funeral procession, he ascended to the stars."

The Hall of Records and the Sphinx, in which Thoth-Hermes' written documents were kept, were fully completed by him. It was the Great Pyramid and the other surface Giza monuments that were left to Thoth-Hermes' son, Tat, and his Followers to complete. Not long after came the Flood, the Cataclysm of 10,000 B.C.E., drowning and destroying the Egypt of the gods. A number of people and the Followers who had prepared beforehand survived the terrible ordeal and afterwards Tat, the legends say, helped to re-establish the worship of his father and successfully preserved his books of mundane science and religion.

In traditional Egyptian chronology there exists an unbroken chain of the rules of the gods, demi-gods, heroes and kings which extends back beyond Narmer-Menes, the first Dynastic Pharaoh, to the Time of the Gods indicating there had to have existed somewhere in Egypt throughout the many thousands of years a continuity of thought and culture.

Manetho recorded from sources already ancient in his time that before Menes who we know lived circa 3200 B.C.E. there ruled 10 Thinite kings for 350 years. Before them 30 Memphite kings reigned for 1,877 years.

And before them the "Reign of the Demigods and Heroes" (including Ares, Anubis, Hercules, Apollo, Amun, Tithoes, Sosus and Zeus) stretched back another 1,255 years. This was in turn preceded by an era called the "Reign of the Dead Spirits" which immediately followed the Great Flood and whose length was equal to that of all the others combined or 3,482 years, bringing us back to 10,164 B.C.E.

And before that the "gods" had ruled Egypt for 13,900 years—among them Horus, Osiris, Isis, Seb, Helios or Ra, Ptah, and of course Thoth-Hermes. Thus Egyptian chronology extends back into prehistory to at least 24,000 B.C.E.

Other ancient and classical writers, who visited Egypt and consulted the Egyptian scribes and the records preserved in the Library of Alexandria also testified to the great antiquity of civilization along the Nile. Plato, who spent thirteen years in Egypt, found religious hymns written by Isis over 10,000 years old, a time figure he insisted was not to be taken figuratively but historically. Diogenes Laertius stated that Egyptian astronomers possessed observations of 373 solar eclipses and 832 lunar eclipses extending back 48,863 years before the lifetime of Alexander the Great. Simplicus, in the sixth century, found evidence of other astronomical observations made reaching several tens of thousands of years earlier.

Eusebius alluded to the fact that the Egyptian Sothic calendar, attributed to Thoth by the Egyptians for its invention, had its origins going back to 15,588 B.C.E.

Syncellus recounted that the Egyptian priests were once in possession of tablets called the "Old Chronicle" containing a list of 30 dynasties in 113 descents covering a period of no less than 36,525 years.

The first series of rulers were called the Auritae or Ruti which means, "the oldest, the primordial," referring to the gods (which reminds us of one of the earliest name of the Sphinx, Rwty). Next came the Mestraeans corresponding to the Predynastic era, then finally the Dynastic Egyptians beginning with Narmer-Menes.

The Turin Papyrus likewise mentioned the passage of "nineteen Han." The Han was a cycle synchronous with that of Anup or Sothis whose period is 1,461 years. Nineteen Han would make a total of 27,759 years.

Herodotus, the great traveler who toured Egypt in 443 B.C.E., alluded several times to the people of the Nile's long and uninterrupted history. In one instance he noted that the scribes had chronicles that described how, "the Sun had twice risen where it now sets, and twice set where it now rises." Schwaller de Lubicz interpreted this to mean that the Egyptians had observed the passage of at least one and a half cycles of the Precession of the Equinoxes during which the Sun very slowly appears to travel backward through the Zodiac, rising in different signs at the same time of the year. One and a half cycles equals over 36,000 years.

Of greatest significance was Herodotus' account of his visit to the Temple of Amun at Thebes where he was shown 341 statues all representing a continuous descent of high priests, son succeeding father. Herodotus, figuring three generations to a century, calculated that the statues testified to a line of priests having existed over a period of 11,340 years, stretching back from his day unbroken to the time of the gods themselves. Who were these mysterious priests? In later times they were called the Shemsu or Shus-en-Her, "the Companions of Horus," but they also appear to have had other identities.

Hecataeus of Miletus who visited Thebes before Herodotus and was shown the same gallery of statues was told that each priest was named "Piromis" or "Per-herm-is." As a Greek corruption from the Egyptian, this title means "Guardians of the House of Hermes" and is directly associated with the Greek pyramis, the word from which we derive our term "pyramid." The House of Hermes is the Great Pyramid and the Hall of Records built by Thoth-Hermes, and the 341 generations of priests are no less than their keepers, Tat and the Followers of the Great Initiator.

The modern archaeological record for Egypt expresses an expanded picture of what the land of the Nile suffered once the Flood catastrophe had subsided. In the period from 10,000 to 5000 B.C.E. archaeology and paleoanthropology reveal the valley of the Nile was for the most part inhabited by hunters and nomads. Such a condition was probably expected for a majority of survivors who, having little civilization left, fell backward and subsisted the only way they could.

Yet despite this somewhere in Egypt or in regions nearby a high culture still flourished, for the Followers of Tat preserved their knowledge and continued to record their histories. As researcher Thomas Dimanne observed:

"The surviving men of knowledge in Egypt may have ruled over a population of only a few hundred, if even that. Thus the cultured settlement of Egypt at this remote period may have consisted of a single site. If this site had been constructed in the Nile Delta, the silt deposits of that mighty river and its branches would have overwhelmed it ages ago. Since 3000 B.C.E. these deposits rose ten feet, while since 15,000 B.C.E. over sixty-five feet of deposit have been added to the depths. If, on the other hand, this site had been built in what is now the desert, in that period a fertile and inhabitable region, the moving sand would have by now obliterated most man-made remains."

In November, 1981, the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia, using imaging radar photography, discovered a whole system of lost river valleys, which date back to ten millennia ago, long hidden under the sands of southwestern Egypt.

Some of these buried valleys are over nine miles wide and could have supported population centers which modern archaeologists, tracing the old river beds, may someday find and unearth.

Another very real possibility is that while the Nile valley held only a handful of cultural centers, they may have been outposts for a much larger center located deeper in the Sahara, to the west.

Wall engravings from the Tassili plateau in southern Algeria and Libya dated circa 8000 to 6000 B.C.E. show people wearing Pharaonic-like garments and headdresses, and worshipping the Sun and a cow goddess, several millennia before these same aspects appeared in Predynastic Egypt.

As the Sahara region became more and more dessicated, Tassili was the last island of fertility until it too succumbed and was abandoned of human habitation. Had the Followers settled here first after the Flood, then returned to the Nile valley only when their original Sahara homeland was overwhelmed by the growing desert? Is it just coincidental that the first signs of returned civilization in Predynastic Egypt occurred at the same time that the far older Tassili culture came to an end?

Though for almost five millennia the greater portion of Egypt remained at a primitive level of existence, yet we know that one or more cultural and religious centers for the Followers must have also thrived, for we find evidence the Followers were continually aiding the tribes around them, step by step raising them back to the level of a high civilization. This is a significant point, for what has astonished archaeologists exploring the Neolithic and Predynastic eras of Egyptian history is the sudden and dramatic jumps or periodic revolutions in culture that took place which did not come about by gradual growth but appear quickly one after the other with no evidence of background development.

First came in circa 4500 B.C.E. the Badarian-Tasian valley cultural spurt paralleled with the development at Merimda in the Delta, closely followed by the Naqada I or Amratian revolution. Then appeared the Naqada II or Gerzean cultural phase about 3500 B.C.E. and the new forms of Ma-adi el Omri.

Within a few centuries such Predynastic centers as Hierakonpolis, Coptos (or Qift) and Abydos had blossomed as if from nowhere.

In these early times the prehistoric Egyptians rapidly acquired the knowledge of agriculture, pottery-making and design, mural art, ship-building and trade with distant lands, vault construction, weaving, stone carving and sculpturing, and copper metal-working, presupposing mining and smelting.

The rapidity of such developments is hard to explain without there having been a behind-the-scenes guiding influence by someone who possessed the knowledge preserved from another more advanced civilization and who introduced it in stages.

It is particularly noteworthy that prehistoric sites where the greatest advances were made apparent were constructed around religious centers. Professor Paul Wheatley commented:

"Whenever in any of the seven regions of primary urban generation we trace back the characteristic urban form to its beginnings we arrive not at a settlement that is dominated by commercial relations, a market, or at one that is focused on a citadel or fortress, but rather by a ceremonial complex."

Egyptologist Michael Hoffman, in his book Egypt Before the Pharaohs, noted an example at one site:

"The archaeological remains at Hierakonpolis further suggest that one attraction to the Kom el Ahmar was the presence of a shrine or temple. The earliest shrines or temples here clearly date to the Protodynastic period and it is logical to infer that these provided a point of attraction for immigrants as well as an arena in which the population accumulated."

It was at Hierakonpolis that F. W. Green discovered, below a Dynastic Old Kingdom temple, the remains of yet another temple which dated well into Predynastic times, indicating that the spot had remained sacred as a religious and learning center for thousands of unbroken years.

These prehistoric temple-schools appear to have been linked with one another in a system that is older than Dynastic Egypt. Long before Upper and Lower Egypt were united into a single nation by the time of Narmer-Menes, some force or power already instituted an organization of the entire land into regions called nomes. Though these sometimes changed depending on political conditions along the Nile, there were for the greater length of the country's history a total of forty-two nomes, each possessing their own nomarchs or governors, centers or capitals, and most important their own religious cult complete with patron gods and goddesses, priesthoods and distinctive worship and temple complexes.

Even after the beginning of historic Dynastic rule the Pharaohs continued to utilize the nome divisions for administration, and during times of political unrest or civil war, when the central Pharaonic government broke down, Egypt survived by returning to the nomes as a backup governmental system.

What has mystified historians is that the establishment of the nomes dates back to a very early period. The same nome standards and ensigns symbolizing nomic patron deities are seen exhibited on the monuments of Senefru from the Third Dynasty, on the First Dynasty Narmer Palette, and as ship decors from the late Gerzean period, back to before 3500 B.C.E.

A key to this mystery may be found in the fact that the names and order of the patron gods of the nomes, as they arise as one travels down the Nile, parallels closely the names and order of the Forty-two Assessors or Testers of Initiation in the subterranean "Hall of Truth" as given in the Egyptian Book of Coming Forth into Light. The existence of the parallel forty-two nomes suggests that, long ago, someone very familiar with the secret Initiations of Thoth-Hermes deliberately organized the entire land of Egypt for the hidden esoteric purpose of representing a great model of the Hermetic Initiations. The primary objective was to divide the land up into a series of religious centers whereby neophytes, traveling down the Nile from center to center, would partake of the religious wisdom each nome offered as preparation for their entrance into the Final Initiations at Giza. Once a religious system was created, it then became the basis for both political and economic patterns as well.

The fact that such an order and organization existed and that it was linked to the Hermetic Mysteries points to the Followers as having been the organizers of the original nome system long before the dawn of Dynastic Egypt.

The establishment of the nomes and their temples by the Followers finds a fascinating confirmation among several ancient records. An important source that tells us much concerning this development is called the Building Texts, found among the hieroglyph inscriptions on the inner enclosure wall of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, in the heart of Upper or southern Egypt.

The Building Texts refer to a number of now lost documents grouped together into what was called "The Sacred Book of Temples" which gave a list, history and descriptions of shrines and sacred places from a very remote period. This Book included a document called "Specifications of the Mounds (Sacred Places) of the Early Primeval Age" subtitled "The Copy of Writings Which Thoth Made, According to the Words of the Sages of Mehweret." The two other documents were "The Sacred Book of the Early Primeval Age of the Gods" and "The Coming of Ra to His Mansion," both of which dealt with the founding of the first post-cataclysmic sacred places after the subsiding floods along the Nile.

In the very beginning, during the Age of the Gods according to the Edfu inscriptions, a mound or island rose out of the Nile waters in the area of Heliopolis, Giza and Saqqara, all now within sight of the Great Pyramid. This new land became known as the Island of the Egg of Creation or the Island of Trampling.

The last name has the connotation of "being beaten down with the foot," to be leveled for occupation and construction. It is here that the first god-ruler called Pn or "This One," identified by the Heliopolitan texts as Atum, the eldest form of Ra as primordial god, established himself.

The Island had been brought into existence by creator-entities called the Shebtiw who were associated with the god "Divine Heart" or Thoth, also called the "Divine Heart of Ra." Thoth and his Followers, according to the Edfu texts, created the Island by planting sacred power objects called the "Member of Progenitor" and the "Image of the Arm," both later embodied in the figure of the god Amun-Min, the energy fertilizing ruler of Luxor Temple, distinguished by his erect phallus and single upraised arm holding a flail.

Once the Island was brought forth from the Nile waters, Pn-Atum-Ra founded his throne and domain in a sacred Field of Reeds upon a radiant Lotus, symbolic of the first light of highest consciousness to dawn within the land. He also set up djed pillars on the Island, which were power devices for balancing natural forces in the earth and atmosphere.

Accompanying him in his work were the "Divine Heart" Thoth, the Ogdoad or "Company of Eight of Thoth"—called in other texts the "sons and daughters of Thoth" that were the first members of the Followers—the "Earth Maker" or Ptah, and the Seven Sages or those who eventually would be responsible for such works as the Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza. They were the possessors of the Fourteen Planetary Gemstones.

How long the rule of Pn-Atum-Ra and the other gods lasted the Edfu Building Texts do not say, but after an apparent break in the records we find conditions have drastically changed. The textual evidence suggests that the original Island of Trampling underwent a major destruction which would have been equivalent to the cataclysmic Flood of 10,000 B.C.E.

The Island is seen again but it is in darkness. The waters surrounding it are no longer the hbbt waters of primeval creation but are the w'rt waters of the dead spirits. The sacred Field of Reeds is described as being submerged, the Island itself is split apart as if by earthquake, while the temple of the first god-ruler is called "relics of the Pn-god" and "the entering into that place which is in decay." All the god-rulers have disappeared, yet the Shebtiw or creator-entities have survived the great disaster and prepare the land once more to receive its spiritual inheritance.

Their first act was to locate and retrieve the sacred books and power objects called the iht (substances) used in the creative processes. These the texts describe were preserved from the destruction in a special secret site named the bw-hmn or the "deep (underground) place that is constructed," which is nothing less than the Hall of Records. The texts make it clear that only the Shebtiw or Companions of Thoth knew of its location, protected it and had access to its secrets.

Interestingly, in association with the bw-hmn Thoth was identified as the "Overlord of the Image," the word "image" here in the hieroglyphs given as hry hw and having the connotation "face, head, statue, sculpture, protecting form." Hw or Hu was the most ancient name for the Sphinx at Giza, so that the Image referred to is the Sphinx as guardian to the entranceway into the lost Hall.

Nearby too the Edfu texts describe there exists the "place where the sacred objects (iht) of the land are endowed with power." There is good reason to believe this is a reference to the Great Pyramid where inside the King's Chamber in the mysterious Stone Box power instruments and sacred tools of Initiation were energized with terrestrial and cosmic forces.

Once the secret books and sacred power objects were taken out of the Hall of Records, the texts say the Followers of Thoth worked to first revive the Island of Trampling, bringing it fully above the waters and restoring the djed pillars to stabilize the "mw waters" or earth energies and energies of the atmosphere.

The workers then established four new sacred sites: the Temples of Wet-jest-Neter, Djeba, the Place of the Piercing of the Snake, and the Mansion of Ms-nhit. The first two of these were dedicated to the Falcon or Horus and the latter two to the Sun or Ra, both of whom in later times became the archetypal symbols representing the inward powers and progress of the Initiate into higher states of consciousness.

In the next step in the re-creation process, the texts continue, the Followers of Thoth went beyond their pre-Flood predecessors and began planting sacred power objects farther and farther away from the central Island, bringing weather and flooding under control which in turn caused the river waters to recede and more dry land to appear.

In each new territory created—called the p’y lands—the Followers gave a name, a symbol, planted a standard or ensign, and assigned a protecting god or goddess—the beginning of the nome system of sacred temples. There appear to have been eighteen of these p'y lands to start with, then were eventually expanded to forty-two in number as the ancient temple system evolved along the banks of the Nile.

In many of the later temples which survived over the course of time, even those built as late as the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, there are repeated inscription references describing how the temple sites were founded during the remote era of the end of the Age of the Gods and are all interlinked according to an age-old established plan.

The text of a stele from Hermopolis dating to the reign of Nectanebo II equates the chief temple site of the city as founded at the first appearance of the Ogdoad or Eight Companions of Thoth, and that the then existing structure was but a "renewal" of the prehistoric original. At Karnak in the Temple of Khonsu in the Shrine of the Opet and in the doorway of the second pylon to Amun, hieroglyph texts repeat the basic outline of the origins of the temples as given in the Edfu sources and describe further how Thebes was among the first p'y lands established.

The walls of Kom Ombo also speak of its own site's great antiquity, while the inscriptions at Dendera and Philae tell how their original temples were built according to the precepts given by Thoth to his priests and priestesses.

According to the Edfu Building Texts the Followers of Thoth also established the first priesthood at each of the p'y land temples, created to help protect the sacred iht power objects given to each site and thereby maintain the vital spiritual and natural energies of the area in balance and harmony.

Once this was finally accomplished, the texts describe a gathering took place of all the Shebtiw or Companions of Thoth at the bw-hmn or Hall of Records. The Builder Gods came forth once more, this time to re-seal the entrance, construct a new "enclosure" about it, and erect power staffs and pillars outside to protect its secrets hidden away again from all but the Shebtiw, acting as its Guardians. The site thereafter became known as bw-hmr or the "place of the throne of the soul," being that place where the soul-spirit took its final flight from the vehicle of the body. This was the goal of the Highest Initiation in the Egyptian Mysteries, which took place at Giza in the Hall of Records and the Great Pyramid.

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]