The Symbolic Wisdom of the Egyptians

gave. Also Philobiblius Philo of Byblos, a historian who claimed to translate the works of the Phoenician priest Sanchuniathon., who according to the testimony of Eusebius, translated Sanchuniathon very carefully into Greek, names Taaut A Phoenician name for the Egyptian god Thoth, the mythical inventor of writing and science. as the first teacher of the Egyptians.

The earliest, knowledge-seeking Greeks traveled through Egypt, such as Orpheus, Solon, and Pythagoras, and sought to be instructed by these people. Proclus A Greek Neoplatonist philosopher. tells us that Solon heard the priest Patanit in Sais in Egypt, Oclapis in Heliopolis, and Ethimon in Sebennytos OCR: "Sebesmiton." This refers to an ancient city in the Nile Delta., and from them undoubtedly received this symbolic wisdom, of which Pythagoras also left traces in his maxims, having likewise heard Aenopheus in Heliopolis.

The Jewish historian Alexander Alexander Polyhistor, a Greek scholar from the 1st century BC who wrote about Jewish history., whom Eusebius cites, says that Abraham also lived in Heliopolis among Egyptian priests and taught them astronomyGerman: Sternkunde; the study of the stars and celestial objects., which had been handed down to him from the time of Enoch; and it is highly probable that he already possessed symbolic knowledge from that source. For, in general, the first humans viewed all created things as so many images through which the rays of the Deity shone forth, from whom they had their existence. And Epictetus