[129]. See the Sumerian Hymn of Creation translated by Sayce, Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia (Gifford Lectures), Edinburgh, 1902, p. 380; Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Boston, U.S.A. 1898, p. 490; King, Seven Tablets, p. 3; Rogers, Rel. of Bab., p. 108.
[130]. “Au commencement était le Nun, l’océan primordial, dans les profondeurs infinies duquel flottaient les germes des choses. De toute éternité Dieu s’engendra et s’enfanta lui-même au sein de cette masse liquide sans forme encore et sans usage.” Maspero, Hist. Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient, p. 326.
[131]. Diogenes Laertius, Vit. Philosoph. Bk I. c. 6.
[132]. Including in that name some who attained to high office in the Catholic Church. Thus Hatch, H. L. p. 255, says with apparent truth that Clement of Alexandria “anticipated Plotinus in conceiving of God as being ‘beyond the One and higher than the Monad itself,’ which was the highest abstraction of current philosophy.” The passage he here relies on is in Clement’s Paedagogus, Bk I. c. 8. Hatch goes on to say, “There is no name that can properly be named of Him: ‘Neither the One nor the Good, nor Mind, nor Absolute Being, nor Father, nor Creator, nor Lord’”—expressions to be found in Clement’s Stromata, Bk V. c. 12. Clement’s orthodoxy may be called in question; but no fault has been found in that respect with Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais and the friend of Hypatia. Yet in his Hymns he uses expressions which would have come naturally to the lips of any Ophite. Thus:
Σὺ δ’ ἄρρην, σὺ δὲ θῆλυς,
Σὺ δὲ φωνά, σὺ δὲ σιγά,
Φύσεως φύσις γονῶσα,
Σὺ δ’ ἄναξ, αἰῶνος αἰών,
Τὸ μέν, ᾗ θέμις βοᾶσαι;
“Male thou and female,