Thoth

thoth

egyptian: Ḏḥwty

Definition

Thoth is the Egyptian god of writing, wisdom, magic, calendar-knowledge, and lunar reckoning — that is, the keeping of time and count by the Moon. In hieroglyphic Egyptian his name is Ḏḥwty (Djehuty). He is shown as a man with an ibis head, or as a baboon. His chief cult site is Hermopolis (Egyptian Khmun, "Eight-Town"), and he is the scribe of the gods, the one who records the weighing of the heart in scenes of funerary judgement.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat Thoth as the divine patron of the scribe's knowledge, of keeping the calendar, and of astronomical reckoning. In the late-antique blending of Egyptian and Greek religion, Thoth was identified with the Greek god Hermes; out of that fusion came "Hermes Trismegistus," the figure to whom the Hermetic writings are attributed. Fowden's *Egyptian Hermes* reads this as a late-pagan creation, rooted in the real Thoth priesthood at Hermopolis.

In Practice

The priests of Thoth at Hermopolis kept up the calendrical and scribal traditions: working out intercalation (the days added to keep a calendar in step), watching for the new lunar crescent, and recording the decanal star tables used to tell the hour of night. In the Hermetica — the Greek and Latin Hermetic writings — Thoth, now as Hermes Trismegistus, appears as the one who reveals cosmological and astrological teaching: the *Corpus Hermeticum* and the *Asclepius* credit their doctrines to the Egyptian god under his Greek name. Thoth's iconography — the ibis crown, the scribal palette — marks an inscription, temple program, or tomb scene as scribal or calendrical in subject.

Historical Origin

Thoth is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts onward, with a major Late-Period and Greco-Roman cult centre at Hermopolis. The Hermes-Thoth identification appears in Greek sources, among them Plutarch's *De Iside et Osiride*, and in the Hermetica preserved by Stobaeus and in the Nag Hammadi codices. He is treated in Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (2003); Fowden, *The Egyptian Hermes* (Princeton 1986); and Copenhaver, *Hermetica* (Cambridge UP 1992).

Further Reading

  • Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
  • Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind
  • Brian Copenhaver, Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius