C.W. King: The Gnostics and Their Remains

Charles William King · Hellenic and Hellenistic Papers Series · 518 pages

A scanned facsimile of C.W. King, The Gnostics and Their Remains, Ancient and Mediæval, second edition, London: David Nutt, 270 Strand, 1887, printed by William Clowes and Sons — 518 pages complete with plates. This is a photographic reproduction of the original book rather than a Philaletheians-set document, so it carries none of the series formatting, and its embedded properties are empty. The author was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; his preface records that the failure of his sight prevented him from taking the work through the press himself, the proofs being corrected by his friend S.S. Lewis of Corpus Christi College, and that Joseph Jacobs supplied the list of authors quoted.

The book treats the Gnostic sects together with the physical objects they left behind — chiefly engraved gems, amulets and talismans — and King's introduction sets out how the material is organised. Speculations owing their birth to India are considered first; Egypt follows, as next in importance for her contribution both to the opinions and to the monuments, though exhibited in a Romanized and late phase whose productions, he says, are too often confounded with the true offspring of the Gnosis. The remains themselves are then discriminated and arranged according to whether their object was religious or medicinal, following Bellermann's classification: the truly Gnostic being those alone that show the Pantheus Abraxas, the invention of Basilides; the Abraxoids being types borrowed from other religions by other Gnostic teachers; and the Abraxaster being purely astrological talismans deriving their virtue from the stars. Much space is given to the pantheistic image of the supreme Abraxas and to the meaning of his name and titles, with the argument that the title has often been applied to monuments earlier than his embodiment in visible form or belonging to nations unconnected with his worship. Mithraicism is then reviewed in its turn, with an account of the resemblance between the two ceremonials and of how much that was Mithraic passed into orthodox practice.

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