AMMON was an Ethiopian divinity whose worship spread over Egypt, and thence to Greece, and was described as the spirit pervading the universe, and as the author of all life in nature.
HERMES TRISMEGISTUS of the Greeks was identified in the time of Plato with Thoth, Thot, or Theut of the Egyptians.[335]
The Egyptian THOTH was considered the father of all knowledge, and everything committed to writing was looked upon as his property; he was therefore the embodied eek: λόγος, and so τρὶς μέγιστος, or the superlatively greatest. He was identified by the Greeks more or less completely with their own HERMES, or MERCURY as he was known to the Romans; he was the messenger of the gods; as dreams are sent by Zeus, it was his office to convey them to men, and he had power to grant refreshing sleep or to deny the blessing. As the gods revealed the remedies for sickness in dreams, Hermes became a god of medicine.
Thoth, the ibis-headed, was the Egyptian god of letters, the deity of wisdom in general, who aided Horus in his conflict with Seth, and recorded the judgments of the dead before Osiris. Hermes κριοφόρος, the averter of diseases, was worshipped in Bœotia. Hermes, the Greek deity, was king of the dead and the conductor of souls to their future home. Probably, therefore, we may rightly look upon Thoth, Hermes, and Hermes Trismegistus as the same person. By many Thoth is considered to be the Egyptian Æsculapius, as he was the inventor of the healing art; the Phœnician god Esmun, one of the ancient Cabiri, was invested with similar attributes, and was worshipped at Carthage and Berytus. The authorship of the oldest Egyptian works on medicine is ascribed to Thoth. These were engraved on pillars of stone. The works of Thoth were ultimately incorporated into the so-called “Hermetic Books.” Clement of Alexandria, who is our only ancient authority on these Hermetic works, says they were forty-two in number.
PROMETHEUS (the man of freethought) is considered by Æschylus as the founder of human civilization.
Æschylus, in his _Prometheus Chained_, makes the god say how he had taught each useful art to man. As regards medicine, he says:—
“Hear my whole story; thou wilt wonder more What useful arts, what science I invented. This first and greatest; when the fell disease Preyed on the human frame, relief was none, Nor healing drug, nor cool, refreshing draught, Nor pain-assuaging unguent; but they pined Without redress, and wasted, till I taught them To mix the balmy medicine, of power To chase each pale disease, and soften pain.”[336]