Hermes Trismegistus

[1] He is the purported author of the Hermetica, a widely diverse series of ancient and medieval pseudepigraphica that laid the basis of various philosophical systems known as Hermeticism.

[6] The renowned scribe Amenhotep and a wise man named Teôs were coequal deities of wisdom, science, and medicine; and, thus, they were placed alongside Imhotep in shrines dedicated to Thoth–Hermes during the Ptolemaic Kingdom.

[9] The Hermetic literature among the Egyptians, which was concerned with conjuring spirits and animating statues, inform the oldest Hellenistic writings on Greco-Babylonian astrology and on the newly developed practice of alchemy.

[10] In a parallel tradition, Hermetic philosophy rationalized and systematized religious cult practices and offered the adept a means of personal ascension from the constraints of physical being.

[11] Fowden asserts that the first datable occurrences of the epithet "thrice great" are in the Legatio of Athenagoras of Athens and in a fragment from Philo of Byblos, c. AD 64–141.

[12] However, in a later work, Copenhaver reports that this epithet is first found in the minutes of a meeting of the council of the Ibis cult, held in 172 BC near Memphis in Egypt.

[25]The French figurist Jesuit missionary to China Joachim Bouvet thought that Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster and the Chinese cultural hero Fuxi were actually the Biblical patriarch Enoch.

According to the account of the Persian astrologer Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi (787–886), Idris/Hermes was termed "Thrice-Wise" Hermes Trismegistus because he had a threefold origin.

"A faceless prophet," writes the Islamicist Pierre Lory, "Hermes possesses no concrete or salient characteristics, differing in this regard from most of the major figures of the Bible and the Quran.

[30] Hermetic fragments are also found in the works of Muslim alchemists such as Jabir ibn Hayyan (died c. 806–816, cited an early version of the Emerald Tablet in his Kitāb Usṭuqus al-uss)[31] and Ibn Umayl (c. 900 – c. 960, quoted and commented upon Hermetic sayings throughout his work, among them also a commentary on the Emerald Tablet).