Petosiris

greek: Πετόσιρις (Petosiris) · egyptian: Pȝ-di-Wsir

Definition

A pseudepigraphic Egyptian priestly figure to whom a foundational astrological compendium of the mid-2nd century BCE was attributed, often paired with the legendary pharaoh Nechepso as 'Nechepso-Petosiris.' The Petosiris of the title is treated by classical authors as a high priest who took his astrological teaching from Hermes Trismegistus, and may correspond historically to a Late-Period (4th-c. BCE) Egyptian priest. Vettius Valens credits him with a treatise titled Horoi (Definitions); the Suda mentions his Astrologumena. Only fragments survive, preserved in the Anthologiae of Valens, in Hephaistio of Thebes, and in the indirect tradition.

In Tradition

Across Hellenistic and modern scholarly tradition, the Nechepso-Petosiris corpus is treated as one of the foundational works of Greco-Egyptian horoscopic astrology — chronologically among the earliest synthesised astrological handbooks, and a key channel through which Babylonian celestial-omen material entered the Greek world. Pingree dates the original work to the late 2nd or early 1st century BCE and locates its composition probably in Egypt; the attribution itself is pseudepigraphic.

In Practice

Petosiris rarely enters chart reading directly; he matters for source-history work. When a Hellenistic-revival practitioner cites the Anthologiae of Valens, the Apotelesmatica of Hephaistio, or the medieval Liber Hermetis, they are often working with material that ultimately traces back to the Nechepso-Petosiris stratum. Practitioners who care about technique provenance look for citations of 'Petosiris' or 'the Old Egyptian' in classical sources to identify older layers; the fragments are collected in Riess's Nechepsonis et Petosiridis fragmenta magica (Philologus Suppl. 6, 1892).

Historical Origin

Spiegelberg (1922) first proposed identifying the literary figure with a Hermopolitan priest known from the well-preserved tomb at Tuna el-Gebel; Neugebauer and Parker (Egyptian Astronomical Texts III: 216) proposed instead a Petosiris buried at Atfih. Quack and Ryholt argue for an earlier 8th-7th-c. BCE Egyptian priest (Petese), with the actual Greek astrological-fragment composition dated mid-2nd c. BCE by Heilen 2011, Pingree 1997, and Quack 2018. Pingree's standard DSB article 'Pseudo-Petosiris' (vol. 10, 1974) is the modern reference; Copenhaver's Hermetica (1992 introduction p. xxxiii) traces the attribution chain.

Etymology

Origin: Egyptian (via Greek). Meaning: The one whom Osiris has given.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Etymology

Further Reading