Agathos daimon
Agathos Daimon (also Agathodaimon ; Greek : Ἀγαθὸς Δαίμων, Ἀγαθοδαίμων, "good spirit") denotes a benevolent deity in Greek antiquity .
Mythological connections
After the meal, the Agathos daimon was offered a donation of wine. Agathe Tyche ( Greek Ἀγαθὴ Τύχη "good luck") often appears in connection with him as a further hypostasis of a blessing formula. A serpent-shaped guardian spirit of the house seems to have been called Agathos Daimon.
According to Pausanias , who suspects that Agathos Daimon was actually an epithet of Zeus , there was a temple dedicated to Agathos Daimon at the gates of Megalopolis on the road to Maenalos in Arcadia.
Pausanias also reports that those who wanted to consult the oracle of Trophonios in Lebadeia had to spend several days in a building dedicated to Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche, preparing for the descent into the oracle cave.
In the Greek novel of Alexander it is reported that the workers were frightened by a snake during the construction of Alexandria. Alexander ordered the snake to be killed and a sanctuary to be built on the site. When the sanctuary was completed, numerous snakes would have appeared and slipped into the homes of the temple precinct. These snakes would have been revered as Agathoi daimones .
In Ptolemaic Egypt, Agathos Daimon was equated with the ancient Egyptian god of fate Shai , who is represented in his animal form as a snake. In addition, a syncretistic connection between Agathos Daimon and the primordial serpent Kneph arose in Greco-Roman Egypt .
Book of Sothis
From these syncretistic combinations a line leads to Agathodaimon as the figure of the Hermetic Scriptures: In the Book of Sothis , Agathodaimon is listed in the first divine dynasty without proof of descent as the third ruler after Hephaestus and Helios . Kronos followed him ; also without any relational reference.
In the “Ecloga Chronograpica” Georgios Synkellos refers to the “Book of Sothis” that Manetho is said to have written for Ptolemy Philadelphos . In the meantime, however, the “Book of Sothis” has been identified as a forgery written by unknown Jewish and Christian authors. Synkellos comments on Agathodaimon: "Son of the second Hermes, father of Tat". The ancient Egyptian god Thoth is named by Synkellos as the first Hermes , whose "holy writings were translated into the books of Agathodaimon after the flood ".
See also
literature
- Philippe Derchain : Agathos Daimon. In: Wolfgang Helck (Hrsg.): Lexikon der Ägyptologie (LÄ). Volume I, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1975, ISBN 3-447-01670-1 , column 94.
- Wolfgang Fauth : Agathos Daimon. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 1, Stuttgart 1964, Col. 121 f.
- Martin P. Nilsson : History of the Greek Religion. Vol. 2: The Hellenistic and Roman times. 4th edition Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-01430-5 . P. 213ff.
- Gerald P. Verbrugghe, John Moore Wickersham: Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt . University of Michigan Press, 2001, ISBN 0-4720-8687-1
References and comments
- ↑ Often in the comedies of Aristophanes , see Der Frieden 300, Die Wespen 525, Die Ritter 105f.
- ↑ Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.36.5 ( English translation ).
- ↑ Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.5 ( English translation ).
- ↑ Pseudo-Kallisthenes 1.32.6 and 10ff.
- ↑ J. Quaegebeur: Le dieu égyptien Shai dans la religion et l'onomastique. In: Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 2 (1975) pp 170-176.
- ^ Philo of Byblos , quoted in Eusebius : Praeparatio Evangelica. I.40.46. See also Heinz J. Thissen: Kneph - A misunderstood God. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy. No. 112, 1996, pp. 153-160, ( PDF ).
- ↑ Derchain: Agathos Daimon. In: Lexicon of Egyptology. Vol. I, Col. 94.
- ↑ Gerald P. Verbrugghe, John Moore Wickersham: Berossos and Manetho . P. 176.
- ^ In GRS Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes (London 1906) and Colpenhave, Hermetica (Cambridge 1992) Agathodaimon appears as the father of Thoth.
- ↑ Gerald P. Verbrugghe, John Moore Wickersham: Berossos and Manetho . P. 174.