The second and third Hermes (1)

Text
Ibn Abī Uṣaibiˁa, ˁUyūn al-anbāˀ, 16f-17:
Hermes the Second was one of the inhabitants of Bābil (= Babylon). He lived in the town of the Chaldeans, Bābil. He lived after the Flood in the days of Nazīr bālī (= -nāṣir-apli?), who was the first to build the city of Bābil after Nimrūd b. Kush. He excelled in medicine and philosophy and was acquainted with the properties of the numbers. His pupil was Pythagoras the arithmetician. This Hermes renewed medicine, philosophy and arithmetic as studied at the time of the Flood. This town of the Chaldeans is the town of the philosophers among the people of the East, and its philosophers were the first to mark frontiers and make laws.

Hermes the Third lived in the city of Miṣr (= Egypt) and was after the Flood. He is the author of a book on poisonous animals. He was a physician and a philosopher, acquainted with the properties of deadly drugs and noxious animals. He was walking about the land and circumambulating it, and expert in setting up towns, in their properties and in those of their populations. He wrote a fine and precious work on the art of alchemy, which has bearings on many techniques, such as the manufacture of glass, glass-ware, clay and the like. He had a pupil called Asclepius, who lived in Syria.

Source (list of abbreviations)
Ibn Abī Uṣaibiˁa, ˁUyūn al-anbāˀ, 16-17

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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