Why Philosophy Comes from Egypt
In the Renaissance it was thought that Philosophy came from Egypt. This is because the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum were thought to be the work of Hermes Trismegistus, who, according to some at least, was the teacher of both Moses and the Greeks. This it turns out was incorrect. The Hermetic texts were the product of a Hellentistic environment that post-dated the Common Era. By a delicious irony, however, it has turned out that the Renaissance was right after all. Philosophy (in our hemisphere at least) does indeed come from Egypt and it is just such a Philosophy as we find in the Hermetic tradition. We know this because of a text discovered in the 19th century and deciphered in the last one called the Memphite Theology which, though the language is poetic, is clearly a work of speculative theology and indeed the oldest expression of what we might call speculative idealism: the idea that mind is the root of all phenomenal reality. This is a remarkable achievement indeed and it is o