Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

Prometheus (500–504)
the inventor of all these things turns out to be a philanthropic titan. The picture
drawn by Plato reflects two tendencies already described (1.3–4): the ‘second-
ary sacralization’ of the inventors, on the one hand, and the growing role of the
Orient as the homeland of all the arts and sciences, on the other. While the ear-
lier literature spoke of the Egyptians as the first discoverers of geometry and cal-
51
Rusch, A. Thoth,
RE 7A (1936) 351–362, esp. 356 f. Plutarch (De Iside, 3) attributed
to him even the invention of music, probably following the tradition that ascribed the
invention of the lyre to Hermes.
52
Roeder, G.
Urkunden zur Religion des Alten Ägyptens, Jena 1915; idem. Thoth,
Roscher’s Lexikon der Mythologie 5 (1924) 825–863, esp. 849ff.; Rusch, op. cit.,
356 ff.; Bonnet, H.
Reallexikon der Ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte, Berlin 1971,
805–812; Bleeker, C. J.
Hathor and Thoth, Leiden 1973, 140 f.; Kurth, D. Thoth,
Lexikon der Ägyptologie 6 (1986) 497–523, esp. 503 ff.
53
Modern literature has a pronounced tendency to represent Thoth as a Greek god-in-
ventor: everything that lies within the scope of his knowledge and skill is automati-
cally regarded as his discovery. See e.g. “Das Epitheton ‘der alle Dinge berechnet’
kennzeichnet Thoth als Erfinder der Rechenkunst” (Kurth,
op. cit., 506); in a simi-
lar way “Zähler der Zeiten, Monate, Jahre” becomes the first discoverer of the cal-
endar and astronomy, “Schützer der Schrift und der Bücher” the inventor of writ-
ing, etc. Though references to Thoth as the god who
gave people the gift of lan-
guage and created different languages are indeed found in Egyptian literature (e.g.
in the Ebers papyrus I, 8; Cerny, J. J. Thoth as creator of languages,
JEA [1948]
12–22; Bleeker,
op. cit., 140), reliable sources on his discoveries are not easy to de-
tect; see, however: “das Schreiben begann am Anfang”, “Sprache erfand” (Kurth,
op. cit., 503).
54
Kleingünther,
op. cit., 78f. See Stesichorus (fr. 213 Page), Aeschylus (fr. 182
Nauck), Sophocles (fr. 399 Nauck), Euripides (fr. 578 Nauck), Gorgias (76 B 11a, c.
30), and Alcidamas (
Od. 22).

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Chapter 6: The history of arithmetic and the origin of number
226
endar astronomy (Hdt. II, 108; II, 4),
55
in Plato it is an Egyptian deity who be-
comes the
pro¯tos heurete¯s of these sciences. Interestingly, he attributes to Thoth
even the invention of draughts and dice, ascribed in the Greek tradition almost
unanimously to Palamedes
56
– probably in order to subsequently contrast these
‘unserious’ things (including writing) to the serious ones, such as dialectic.
57
As a result, Palamedes appears to be deprived of all the discoveries tradi-
tionally associated with him, though his name remains a synonym for inventor:
in the same
Phaedrus, Zeno of Elea, the inventor of dialectic, figures as “Elean
Palamedes” (cf. Arist. fr. 65 Rose). Plato outlined this transformation earlier, in
the
Republic, where he ridicules the notion, passing from one tragedy to an-
other, of Palamedes as an inventor of the art of counting (@riqmò~ kaì logi-
smó~) – as if Agamemnon before him could not count his own legs properly
(522c–d)! In later dialogues, in particular in
Philebus (18b–d), the invention of
writing is once more related to Thoth, while in the
Laws (677c–d) Plato men-
tions Palamedes and other traditional
pro¯toi heuretai (Daedalus, Orpheus, Mar-
syas, Olympus), only to give the readers to understand that all important things
were invented many thousand years before them, in the ‘antediluvian’ epoch,
and have only recently been ‘revealed’ to the Greeks.
58
Among Plato’s precursors in the ‘orientalization’ of the traditional Greek
eûr2mata was Isocrates, whose influence is clearly traceable in Phaedrus.
59
Though