The Most Secret Secrets: Egyptian-Greek Hieroglyphics

things useful to life.

Book 1, ch. 2.
First Gods.

The same author, in the following chapter, narrates that from the first men, the Sun and the Moon were worshiped as eternal gods, and that the former was called Osiris and the latter Isis for a specific reason of naming. But who the one and true God of gods is, and when and where the first men and kings in the world existed, we have accepted as undoubted from the Holy Scriptures. Thus, we recognize the vanity of the Egyptians in this, as well as in their assertion of the antiquity and numerous series of their kings continued for more than twenty thousand years. Since they sometimes say Isis and Osiris were born of Saturn, it is a wonder why they hold them to be the first eternal gods and unbegotten, or celestial lights. However, we can excuse the ethnic writers in these matters if they handed down things differently than they are, both because they could not know the truth due to the antiquity of the events, and because the sacred history of Moses was unknown to them, and because due to the religion of the gods then accepted, it was not permitted to think otherwise. As for us, so that we may establish a foundation for Egyptian doctrine,

Proposition and summary of the entire treatise.

we have discovered from countless indications that in Egypt a certain science teaching the most arcane works of nature, or GOLDEN MEDICINE—not from gold, but more precious than gold a thousand times—was in use, especially among the most ancient Philosophers, Priests, and Kings. So that this could be passed on to wiser posterity, yet remain unknown to the vulgar, they used secret marks taken from animals for writing, which were later called Hieroglyphics by the Greeks. For the declaration of things, they universally employed Allegories transferred from fictitious persons and their deeds. Hence, in succeeding times, as the superstition of ignorant men preoccupied their minds, those persons were held as gods or kings, animals were worshiped as sacred and inviolable, and eternal monuments were established to each of them. As we shall inquire into these in a certain order: first regarding the Gods, then the Egyptian Kings, thirdly the Animals and their sacred characters, and finally regarding the monuments, indications, and vestiges which prove that this art was most common and, as it were, native in Egypt, we shall treat this in the first book.