Egyptian Mysteries

For two thousand years Egypt has been the West’s imagined birthplace of secret wisdom. Greek writers credited it with the mysteries, Renaissance scholars believed Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian sage, and the Victorian occult revival filled its temples with pharaonic imagery.

This cabinet sets the genuine Egyptian sources, above all the funerary literature translated by E. A. Wallis Budge, beside the esoteric reception, from Iamblichus’ On the Mysteries to Gerald Massey’s speculative histories. Reading the two together is the best way to separate Egypt from “Egypt”.

Two very different kinds of book share this room. Some are Egyptological editions and translations, such as Budge’s Book of the Dead, which aim to present ancient sources as accurately as their period allowed. Others are Hermetic, Masonic or Theosophical works that treat Egypt as a symbol of primordial wisdom. Both are valuable, but they answer different questions. Read the ancient texts first for what the Egyptians themselves wrote, then the later works for how Egypt was imagined, and notice how often the second group relied on outdated scholarship from the first.