With Osiris and Isis is always associated the Egyptian Thoth whom the
Greeks called Hermes, and who is also identified with Mercury. He was
described as the friend, or the secretary, of Osiris. Eusebius quotes
an earlier author who identified Hermes with Moses; but if Moses was
the inventor of medicine and all other sciences it would be hardly
exact to speak of him as “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.”
Thoth, who is also claimed as a Phoenician, as Canaan the son of Ham,
and as an associate of Saturn, attained perhaps the greatest fame
as an inventor of medicine. He was the presumed author of the six
sacred books which the Egyptian priests were bound to follow in their
treatment of the sick. One of these books was specially devoted to
pharmacy.
Thoth, or Hermes, is supposed to have invented alchemy as well as
medicine, the art of writing, arithmetic, laws, music, and the
cultivation of the olive. According to Jamblicus, who wrote on the
mysteries of Egypt in the reign of the Emperor Julian, the Egyptian
priests then recognised forty-two books as the genuine works of Hermes.
Six of these dealt respectively with anatomy, diseases in general,
women’s complaints, eye diseases, surgery, and the preparation of
remedies. Jamblicus is not sure of their authenticity, and, as already
stated, Galen uncompromisingly declares them to be apocryphal. Other
writers are far less modest than Jamblicus in their estimates of the
number of the writings of Hermes. Seleucus totals them at 20,000, and
Manethon says 38,000.
The legend of Hermes apparently grew up among the Alexandrian writers
of the first century. It was from them that his surname Trismegistus
(thrice-great) originated. It was pretended that in the old Egyptian
temples the works of Hermes were kept on papyri, and that the priests
in treating diseases were bound to follow his directions implicitly.
If they did, and the patient died, they were exonerated; but if they
departed from the written instructions they were liable to be condemned
to death, even though the patient recovered.
It is hardly necessary to say that in the preceding paragraph no
attempt has been made to discuss modern researches on ancient beliefs.
Greek scholars, for example, trace the Greek Hermes to an Indian
source, and assume the existence of two gods of the same name.