Thoth

Thoth (Djehuty) is the Egyptian god of writing, wisdom, measure, and magic — the ibis-headed scribe of the gods who recorded the judgment of souls in the hall of Osiris and balanced the scales against the feather of Ma'at. The inventor of letters, numbers, and the calendar, he was the keeper of all knowledge, the divine intelligence that orders time and speech.

The Greeks recognized in him their own Hermes, god of language and interpretation, and identified the two. From this fusion grew the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, the 'thrice-great' sage credited with the sacred Hermetic books that this library preserves. Already Plato, in the Phaedrus, tells the Egyptian tale of the god Theuth (Thoth) who invented writing and offered it to the king — a gift, Plato warns, that may bring forgetfulness as much as wisdom.