There would appear to have been also other Hermes, but if we look at the condition of things which obtained in Egypt when the Pyramids of Memphis are supposed to have been erected, within 300 years of the supposed date of the deluge, and that the Beni Hassan tombs, about 300 years later, depict the manners and customs of what we cannot help admitting, was a highly civilized nation, we must be struck with the fact that the distance of time between the deluge and the building of these pyramids and tombs is so short, that it might be represented by a comparison of our own date with those of Queen Elizabeth and Henry the Third.

Jackson in his “Antiquities” tells us that, Sanchoniatho states that the most ancient Phoenician records show that letters were invented soon after the dispersion of mankind, by Tsaut, the son of Mizor or Misraim, who was the first Egyptian Hermes or Thoth.  He went out of Phoenicia, and first, with a colony of Mizrites, settled and reigned in Egypt, and, according to Cicero, gave both laws and letters to the Egyptians.

This Hermes was born in the second generation after the flood, and was not only the inventor of letters and writing, but he is also said to have delineated the sacred characters or symbols of the elements and planets, viz.,—­sun, moon, earth, air, fire, water, &c.

These symbols are without doubt of very ancient origin, and Boerhaeve in his Theory of Chemistry explains them hieroglyphically as follows:—­

    [Transcriber’s Note: 
    The listed symbols are included in the “images” directory
    accompanying the html version of this file.]

[Symbol:  plus] Denotes anything sharp, gnawing, or corrosive; as vinegar or fire:  being supposed to be stuck around with barbed spikes.

[Symbol:  sun] Denotes a perfect immutable simple body, such as gold, which has nothing acrimonious or heterogeneous adhering to it.

[Symbol:  first quarter moon] Denotes half gold, whose inside, if turned outward, would make it entire gold, as having nothing foreign or corrosive in it; which the alchemists observe of silver.

[Symbol:  mercury] Denotes the inside to be pure gold, but the outer part of the colour of silver and a corrosive underneath, which, if taken away, would leave it mere gold, and this the adepts affirm of mercury.

[Symbol:  female/venus] Denotes the chief part to be gold; whereto, however, adheres another large, crude, corrosive part, which, if removed, would leave the rest possessed with all the properties of gold, and this the adepts affirm of copper.

[Symbol:  male/mars] Likewise denotes gold at the bottom, but attended with a great proportion of a sharp corrosive, sometimes amounting to a half of the whole, whence half the character expresses acrimony; which, accordingly, both alchemists and physicians observe of iron, and hence that common opinion of the adepts that the aurum vivum, or gold of the philosophers, is contained in iron, and that the universal medicine is rather to be sought in this metal than in gold itself.