Editing Book of Thoth (section)

{{Short description|Name given to many ancient Egyptian texts}}
{{About|several ancient Egyptian books|Aleister Crowley's 1944 book|The Book of Thoth (Crowley)|other uses|Book of Thoth (disambiguation)}}
{{Italic title}}
''''' Book of Thoth''''' is a name given to many [[ancient Egypt|ancient Egyptian]] texts attributed to [[Thoth]], the [[Egyptian pantheon|Egyptian god]] of writing and knowledge. They include many texts that were mentioned by ancient authors including a magical book that appears in an ancient Egyptian story.

Since ancient Egypt practiced [[pseudepigrapha]], all books were considered to have been written by Thoth because of his role as the God of Writing. [[Iamblichus]] explained that it was only natural that Egyptian priests should attribute all their writings to Thoth as homage for his being the source of all knowledge.<ref>Fowden 1993, p. 187</ref>

For this reason Thoth is considered the author of ''[[Book of the Dead|The Book Of Coming Forth By Day]]'' also known as The Book Of The Dead.<ref>The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, Redford, Donald B.(ed), Oxford University Press, (2001), vol. 2, p. 399</ref>

The Book of Thoth is mentioned in the oldest inscription on the sarcophagus of the Imamy with a quote from chapter 68 of the "Book of the Dead", as well as on the sarcophagus of Sobek.: "You (Imamy) are sitting under the branches of a fig tree near Hathor in front of a wide sun disk when she goes to Heleopolis, with the writing of the word of God in the book of Thoth."<ref>Тураев Б. Бог Тот. Опыт исследования в области истории древне-египетской культуры. - Лейпциг, 1898. с. 44</ref><ref>https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Boris_Turaev/bog-tot/</ref>

The Christian [[church father]] [[Clement of Alexandria]], in the sixth book of his work ''[[Stromata]]'', mentions forty-two books used by Egyptian priests that he says contain "the whole philosophy of the Egyptians". All these books, according to Clement, were written by [[Hermes]] (a Greek god that the Greeks likened to Thoth, claiming they were the same god, having similar qualities, e.g. both invented writing). Translation from Egyptian language and concepts to Greek language and concepts was not entirely accurate, and some Egyptian authenticity was lost. Among the subjects they cover are hymns, rituals, temple construction, astrology, geography, and medicine.<ref>Fowden 1993, pp. 58–59</ref>

The Egyptologists Richard Lewis Jasnow and Karl-Theodor Zauzich have dubbed a long Egyptian text from the [[Ptolemaic period]] "The Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth". This [[Demotic (Egyptian)|Demotic]] text, known from more than forty fragmentary copies, consists of a dialogue between a person called "The-one-who-loves-knowledge" and a figure that Jasnow and Zauzich identify as Thoth. The topics of their conversation include the work of [[scribe]]s, various aspects of the gods and their sacred animals, and the [[Duat]], the realm of the dead.<ref>Jasnow and Zauzich 2005, pp. 2–9, 72–73</ref>