266 
to write, and said to them, “ 0 my sons, know that you are 
Ssabians, and therefore learn to read in your youth, for you will 
find the advantage of it in age/' They were the learned men — 
the magi of the period. They believed that Ssabi, or Hermes, 
wrote a work on the unity of God, and that the writings of Seth 
and Idris remained till the time of Abraham. The Arabian 
author Schahradstain calls Hermes a great prophet, and gives his 
opinion that Hermes was identical with Idris, and first gave 
names to the planets, and invented the Zodiac, and showed the 
oppositions and conjunctions of the former. Thoth, or Hermes, 
was regarded as the real author of everything produced or dis- 
covered by the human mind — as the father of all knowledge, 
invention, legislation, &c. Hence, everything that man had dis- 
covered and committed to writing was regarded as the property of 
Hermes. As he was thus the source of all knowledge and thought, 
or the Ao-yoc embodied, he was termed rpic /Ay urrog, Hermes Tris- 
megistus. It was said that Pythagoras and Plato had derived 
all their knowledge from the Egyptian Hermes. These works, or 
some of them, were extant at a late period of the Egyptian history, 
and Manetho, in his dedicatory epistle to his sovereign, Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, says, that, according to his commands, he shall lay 
before the king what he had gathered from the sacred book written 
by Plermes, his forefather. 
65. Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, 
could not have been ignorant of these works, which must have 
been laid open to his inspection, as presumptive heir to the throne 
of Egypt. 
66. Clement of Alexandria speaks of forty-two books of Hermes, 
containing the sum-total of human and divine knowledge and 
wisdom, and treating on cosmography, astronomy, geography, 
religion, and more especially on medicine. This accords with the 
account of Berosus : — 
In his time [that of Xisuthrus] happened the great Deluge, the history 
of which is given in this manner. The deity Cronus appeared to him in 
a vision, and gave him notice that upon the fifteenth day of the month 
Dsesia there would he a flood by which mankind would be destroyed. He 
therefore enjoined him to commit to writing a history of the beginning, 
procedure, and final conclusion of all things down to the present term, and 
to bury these accounts securely in the city of the Sun at Sippara, and to 
build a vessel, &c. 
67. After recounting the Deluge, Berosus continues : — . 
In this manner they returned to Babylon, and having found the writings 
at Sippara, they set about building cities and erecting temples ; and 
Babylon was thus inhabited again. 
68. Since recent researches into the cuneiform inscriptions have 
