Edmund Schilvold
Statement by the professor in systematic theology, Knut Alfsvaag, who functioned as my guide and supervisor when I was writing my master's thesis (2019/2020): “Edmund Schilvold wrote his master's thesis on [the topic of] the conception of Nous in Plato and Augustine. In it, he demonstrates great insight into the thinking of both Plato and Augustine, sees both similarities and dissimilarities between them, and is able to employ that insight in a critical analysis of the differently oriented metaphysics, cosmology and anthropology we have in [the age of] modernity. Here he shows a philosophical and theological understanding on a level rarely seen.”
Translated into English from the following statement in Norwegian: “Edmund Schilvold skrev sin masteroppgave om forståelsen av Nous (sinn eller fornuft) hos Platon [den store greske filosofen] og Augustin [den sentrale kirkefaderen]. Han demonstrerer der stor innsikt i både Platons og Augustins tenkning, ser både likheter og ulikheter mellom dem, og kan anvende den innsikten i en kritisk analyse av den annerledes orienterte metafysikk, kosmologi og antropologi vi har i moderniteten. Han viser her filosofisk og teologisk forståelse på et nivå man sjelden finner.”
Short summary of experience and accomplishments: Master of Theology (two years, 120 ECTS). Author, photographer, conductor of courses and graphic designer. Twelve years of experience (2003–2015). In June 2020 I earned, after five and a half years of studies, a master’s degree in theology.
I have written, shot images for, designed and prepared for printing two large “celebratory” or “gift” books:
Forever Jeloy. A tribute to the gem of the Oslofjord. ISBN 978-82-997398-0-1. A book on the nature, the history and the folklore of Jeloy, an island in Southern Norway, published in the autumn of 2006. A regional “bestseller”.
On the mystical road of longing. ISBN 978-82-997398-1-8. A collection of poems and short stories, illustrated with my own photographs, published in the autumn of 2008.
From early 2004 through the spring of 2008 I was associated with the local newspaper Moss Dagblad as a regular freelancer (part-time, roughly corresponding to a job position of 50 percent). Over the course of that period, I completed more than 500 different assignments for this newspaper – consisting mainly in the production of news articles, reportages and portrait interviews.
I also carried out a number of “weekend watches” for Moss Dagblad. I was then – at least in practice – the main person responsible for the news portion of the paper issued the following Monday.
Apart from those activities, I have published a number of reportages in various nationwide magazines – including “Hunting & Fishing” and “Wilderness Living”. In 2009 and 2010 I worked as a freelancer for the online photography magazine and news outlet www.akam.no.
From early 2007 through 2011, moreover, I rented an art studio in the so-called “Mill Town” in Moss, where I, amongst other things, performed “fine art printing” on behalf of various customers, and shared spaces with prominent local artists.
In the spring of 2008, I decided to start conducting long-weekend workshops in digital photography (Friday through Sunday, usually 18–20 hours in total) for groups of up to six persons on the island of Jeloy. These courses consisted in a combination of lectures and exercises in practical photography in the outdoors and image editing in Adobe Photoshop.
At the time of writing, I have conducted more than 30 such long-weekend workshops on Jeloy. I have also conducted five similar workshops in other parts of Norway, as well as a week-long “photography safari” in Western Ireland. In total, this amounts to roughly 700 hours of real-life teaching experience. The feedback from course participants has almost always been very positive.
From late 2008 through 2011, I was one of the editors of and contributors to a book project dealing with a natural and recreational area in the municipality of Moss in Southern Norway. This was a paid assignment given to me by a local association, and corresponded to a job position of approximately 25 percent. The book was at last published by the aforementioned association (Kambo Vel) in 2017.
In January 2015 I was admitted to and commenced the church-oriented theology program at the School of Mission and Theology in Western Norway, an institution which later became part of the so-called VID Specialized University. In May 2020, I completed a master’s thesis on Platonic philosophy and the theology of St. Augustine of Hippo, and in June that year, I was awarded an academic master’s degree in theology (M.Th.). Since then, I have continued my studies of ancient Platonism, and one of my long-term ambitions is to contribute to a revival of the Platonic Academy.
Le Roi est mort -- vive le Roi!
Website: https://edmund-schilvold.com/
Archive: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Edmund+Schilvold%22
Translated into English from the following statement in Norwegian: “Edmund Schilvold skrev sin masteroppgave om forståelsen av Nous (sinn eller fornuft) hos Platon [den store greske filosofen] og Augustin [den sentrale kirkefaderen]. Han demonstrerer der stor innsikt i både Platons og Augustins tenkning, ser både likheter og ulikheter mellom dem, og kan anvende den innsikten i en kritisk analyse av den annerledes orienterte metafysikk, kosmologi og antropologi vi har i moderniteten. Han viser her filosofisk og teologisk forståelse på et nivå man sjelden finner.”
Short summary of experience and accomplishments: Master of Theology (two years, 120 ECTS). Author, photographer, conductor of courses and graphic designer. Twelve years of experience (2003–2015). In June 2020 I earned, after five and a half years of studies, a master’s degree in theology.
I have written, shot images for, designed and prepared for printing two large “celebratory” or “gift” books:
Forever Jeloy. A tribute to the gem of the Oslofjord. ISBN 978-82-997398-0-1. A book on the nature, the history and the folklore of Jeloy, an island in Southern Norway, published in the autumn of 2006. A regional “bestseller”.
On the mystical road of longing. ISBN 978-82-997398-1-8. A collection of poems and short stories, illustrated with my own photographs, published in the autumn of 2008.
From early 2004 through the spring of 2008 I was associated with the local newspaper Moss Dagblad as a regular freelancer (part-time, roughly corresponding to a job position of 50 percent). Over the course of that period, I completed more than 500 different assignments for this newspaper – consisting mainly in the production of news articles, reportages and portrait interviews.
I also carried out a number of “weekend watches” for Moss Dagblad. I was then – at least in practice – the main person responsible for the news portion of the paper issued the following Monday.
Apart from those activities, I have published a number of reportages in various nationwide magazines – including “Hunting & Fishing” and “Wilderness Living”. In 2009 and 2010 I worked as a freelancer for the online photography magazine and news outlet www.akam.no.
From early 2007 through 2011, moreover, I rented an art studio in the so-called “Mill Town” in Moss, where I, amongst other things, performed “fine art printing” on behalf of various customers, and shared spaces with prominent local artists.
In the spring of 2008, I decided to start conducting long-weekend workshops in digital photography (Friday through Sunday, usually 18–20 hours in total) for groups of up to six persons on the island of Jeloy. These courses consisted in a combination of lectures and exercises in practical photography in the outdoors and image editing in Adobe Photoshop.
At the time of writing, I have conducted more than 30 such long-weekend workshops on Jeloy. I have also conducted five similar workshops in other parts of Norway, as well as a week-long “photography safari” in Western Ireland. In total, this amounts to roughly 700 hours of real-life teaching experience. The feedback from course participants has almost always been very positive.
From late 2008 through 2011, I was one of the editors of and contributors to a book project dealing with a natural and recreational area in the municipality of Moss in Southern Norway. This was a paid assignment given to me by a local association, and corresponded to a job position of approximately 25 percent. The book was at last published by the aforementioned association (Kambo Vel) in 2017.
In January 2015 I was admitted to and commenced the church-oriented theology program at the School of Mission and Theology in Western Norway, an institution which later became part of the so-called VID Specialized University. In May 2020, I completed a master’s thesis on Platonic philosophy and the theology of St. Augustine of Hippo, and in June that year, I was awarded an academic master’s degree in theology (M.Th.). Since then, I have continued my studies of ancient Platonism, and one of my long-term ambitions is to contribute to a revival of the Platonic Academy.
Le Roi est mort -- vive le Roi!
Website: https://edmund-schilvold.com/
Archive: https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Edmund+Schilvold%22
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Master's Thesis in Theology (2020) by Edmund Schilvold
This is the longest and most significant literary work I have published since the completion of my first collection of poems, On the Mystical Road of Longing (my second book), back in 2008.
I have called it A Study of the Concept of Nous, since this is an academic paper, and since the nature of Nous or "Intellect" (as it is often translated) is its primary focus, but it could also have been styled The Platonic Heritage of Traditional Christianity, or Why Christians Should Acknowledge That They Are Platonists, or Why We Need To Recover A Direct Connection To The Divine. For in this study, I describe some rather startling discoveries, such as the existence of a Platonic theology resembling the theology hinted at by Christ himself, in his sayings in the Gospels, and later expressed in the Nicene Creed. When one calls to mind that Plato lived some 400 years before the emergence of Christianity, and some 700 years before the council was convened at Nicea, this cannot but be viewed as staggering.
Another discovery I elaborate on is the distinction which may be made, on the basis of Plato's own words, between the Good (Itself) and the Idea of the Good (or the "Form" of the Good, as it is sometimes called), and that this distinction could be seen as referring to the same metaphysical realities (or divine entities) as those Christianity calls Father and Son, or Father and Eternal Word. In fact, Plato himself uses the metaphors of Father and Child (or Offspring), and it seems highly probable that St. Augustine of Hippo was aware of this when he spoke of the Idea or Face of God, as I show the chapter on St. Augustine.
This distinction is closely related to yet another realization I have arrived at, namely that the two different "roads" to or "modes of apprehending" the Supreme God, the "Via Positiva" and "Via Negativa", usually seen as originating with late Platonism (so-called "Neoplatonism") or early medieval Christianity (St. Denis or "Pseudo-Dionysius") are in fact present in the works of Plato himself.
I also touch on the multiple levels of meaning built into the Republic (Norwegian: Staten), which is arguably Plato's most important dialogue, and why this means that the Republic, the main title of which in Greek is Politeia, should actually be called Government, since this term preserves the several levels of meaning alluded to by the original one.
But the most important part of my thesis has to do with Nous (or Noos), and is about the recovery, in both a linguistic, educational and psychological sense, of a complete anthropology, as one might call it, meaning a view of the human being (the individual Soul) which takes into account and aims to reawaken the ability to connect with the Above, i.e. with the metaphysical realities beyond this world of nature and of matter, and, ultimately, with the Supreme Deity, the source of Wisdom and Objective Knowledge.
I find it difficult to believe that I am almost alone, at least in the present day and age, in having seen the astonishing aspects of Platonism (and the momentous implications) I have here mentioned or alluded to, but it does indeed look that way to me at present. One possible way to interpret the near absence of academic works dealing with these subjects is avoidance, meaning that a number of people have found what I have found, but that almost all of them have chosen not to commit their discoveries to writing. Another possibility is that the vast majority of readers of Plato and St. Augustine are so mentally dominated by the zeitgeist (which is that of Materialism and Reductionism, Nominalism and Anti-Essentialism), and by certain schools of interpretation, that they are quite incapable of seeing what the ancient texts actually state and imply. Both are probably contributing to the strange status quo.
I should mention, however, that I am greatly indebted to a modern-day Platonist who, back in the 1990s, gave and published a long series of lectures on Platonic philosophy, namely Dr. Pierre Grimes – as I have stated in the introduction to my thesis. That long series of absolutely fantastic lectures contributed significantly to the first kindling in me of an interest in the Platonic worldview, back in 2009 and 2010. I did not fully understand everything that was said, but many of the surprising messages and the fascinating perspectives remained with me, and when I began the systematic research for my master's thesis, in September 2019, I was able to draw on and take advantage of what I had learned around a decade earlier.
Well, without further ado, as they say, I present to you my thesis, and invite you to download it and read it, free of charge. Please see link below.
P.S.: I welcome polite and Truth-oriented discussion, so if you have questions or comments you believe to be well-founded, or you are a researcher with a similar or different perspective, I would love to hear from you.
This paper may also be viewed on and downloaded from my homepage at https://edmund-schilvold.com/
This is a new version of the master's thesis published here on Academia in late 2020. You can still find the old version elsewhere on my profile.
Conference Presentations by Edmund Schilvold
If that sounds a little mysterious, then please allow me to assure you that the paper itself is, like my master's thesis of 2020, composed in a fairly easy-to-understand and jargon-free English, and that the claim that the Good of Socrates and Plato in fact consists of two different, but intimately related natures, styled the Idea of the Good and the Good Itself, is likely to look much clearer to you once you have read the initial pages.
I believe I am among the first in modern times to perceive and articulate this distinction that Plato arguably makes between the "inner" and the "outer" nature of the metaphysical and universal Good, and to make the case for this new hermeneutical or interpretive approach to the Republic, and I would venture to say that this distinction is as important to grasp, if not even more important, as the one I established between Nous and Dianoia, Divine, Mental Seeing and Logical, Discursive Reasoning, in my master's thesis.
In both of these cases, that of the Highest Metaphysical or Divine Entities and that of the highest mental faculties or powers available to the Incarnated Human Being, the original and highly sophisticated conception held by Plato, and partially set forth in his dialogues, appears to have gradually become distorted and misconstrued, partly as a result of the challenges inherent in the act of translating certain crucial Greek terms into other languages, such as Latin or English, partly because of the overarching tendency towards Simplification observable in almost all the fields of human activity since well before the dawn of the Modern Era (and particularly when it comes to the phenomenon of language), and partly as a result of the two merciless prongs of that which has been the increasingly dominant strand of intellectual and academic thought in Europe for perhaps a thousand years now, namely the radically assertive, dogmatically religious one, completely divorced from Contemplation, Inspiration and Knowledge, and therefore a form of Empiricism, and of Irrationality, and the narrowly "rationalistic", purely logical and calculating and deliberating one, which is also totally cut off from Noesis, from Spirit and from Wisdom, and also, therefore, empirically oriented and irrational, and between which the remains of Ancient Platonism, and of the once living Platonic tradition, have now been caught for a very long time.
In addition to the above mentioned analysis of the Nature or Natures of Socrates' and Plato's Good, which is really a study of Socratic or Platonic theology (which was styled "philosophy" because Platonic philosophy was, at its core, about the Seeking Out and Loving of Wisdom, Sophia), I go into some detail as regards the nature of the Platonic Ideas in general, and the clues to the ancient spectrum of signification of the term "idea" (ἰδέα; idea) provided by its exceedingly ancient Indo-European roots, as well as by probable cognates of that Greek term in present-day Norwegian.
Hint: The disappearance of the "v" in Greek has obscured one of the likely meanings of Plato's crucial term, which was probably closely related to the concept of seeing and being seen. Once the implications of this are grasped, the vistas that open up are truly amazing.
The title of the paper is The Nature of Plato’s Good Revealed: Platonic Theology and Its Relation to Christianity and Judaism: The Case for Distinguishing between the Idea of the Good and the Good Itself.
What is the most plausible interpretation of the term the Idea of the Good – arguably one of the most important of its kind in Plato’s Republic (the Politeia)? In other words, what did Plato intend this term to signify?
The ordinary and established way of reading the Politeia is indeed to view the phrase “the Idea of the Good” as referring to the exact same metaphysical entity as the Good, which is sometimes called the Good Itself.
Contrary to the dominant interpretative tradition, however, which at once seizes upon the seemingly obvious meaning of certain sentences and ignores or downplays the probable import of others, I will argue that it is in fact necessary to distinguish between the Good Itself and the Idea of it, and that these two terms do in fact refer to two distinct, albeit intimately related and virtually inseparable divine genera.
Furthermore, and in conjunction with this argument, I will suggest, and attempt to prove, that the so-called Child or Offspring (506e–507a) of the Good is not actually Helios, the Sun of Generation (Genesis), but the Idea of the Good.
Papers by Edmund Schilvold
Jesus and Nicodemus – new light shed on the climactic nightly meeting
© Edmund Schilvold (M.Th.) 2023
Other papers and presentations in this series: The Nature of Plato's Good Revealed: Platonic Theology and Its Relation to Christianity and Judaism: The Case for Distinguishing between the Idea of the Good and the Good Itself
Free E-Books on Various Important Topics by Edmund Schilvold
Interestingly, the mathematical expositions of this document were copied by a scribe named Ahmose (apparently a fairly common name in Egypt at the time) from an older document created during the reign of the twelfth-dynasty pharaoh Amenemhat III – the same ruler whom it is now believed that one of the so-called “Hyksos” or Tanis Sphinxes depicts. Since the Rhind Papyrus is dated to the 33rd year of the reign of the “Hyksos” or Amu ruler Apepi/Apopi/Apophis, and it would seem, therefore, that the copying from the older original took place in the City of Avaris – the Theban Egyptians did not even recognize Apophis and the other Hyksos monarchs of the 15th dynasty as legitimate rulers – the following question naturally arises: Was one of the reasons for this copying a bond, or some other connection still unknown to us, between Amenemhat III and Apophis?
The first addition of the original mathematical treatise from the 12th dynasty, which is not really a note, but a short introduction to the mathematical content and its origin, is written by Ahmose, the scribe, and gives year 33 of Apophis as the time of copying. The second note (also referred to as “Number 87”), which is found on the verso or backside, mentions what would seem to be the conquest of the City of Heliopolis and the eastern border region fortress of Sile/Tjaru by Ahmose, King of Thebes – soon to become Ahmose I, liberator of Egypt and founder of the 18th dynasty. This note also mentions a year eleven, which is probably the 11th year of the reign of the “Hyksos” monarch Khamudi or Chamudi, son of Apophis. (Source: Wikipedia)
Upon closer examination, the internal evidence of the messages recorded on this papyrus makes it a virtual certainty that it was created in Avaris, by individuals who were sympathetic to, or compelled or obliged to act respectfully and submissively towards, the Hyksos overlordship over and domination of both Upper and Lower Egypt. The most revealing string of words of all is found in the rather strange and disjointed series of brief remarks referred to as “Number 86”, and reads as follows:
“his brother, the steward Kamose”
The “steward” was precisely how the “Hyksos” rulers of the Delta viewed Kamose, King of Thebes, since he was their vassal or subordinate, but to Kamose and his family, this designation would have seemed belittling and degrading. We know this because of what Kamose says of himself and of how he viewed the situation Egypt was in on the two stelae he commanded to be made. On the first, he styles himself “Kamose, granted life, beloved of Amen-re, lord of Thrones of-the-Two-Lands”, and claims that “no man rests, being wasted (?) through servitude (?) of the Setyu” [an alternative Egyptian designation for the Amu], and proclaims that “My desire is to deliver Egypt” (Gardiner, 1916, pp. 107–108). The second features even stronger language; there Kamose says that “{You sent me} a miserable {or disrespectful, or abusive} answer out of your town {, Apophis}.” He then goes on to say that “Your speech is mean when you make me {Kamose} a (mere) ‘prince,’ whereas you are a ‘ruler,’ as if to beg for yourself the execution-block to which you will fall.” (Pritchard, 1969, pp. 554–555)
The brother of Kamose was Ahmose, of course. That second name is not mentioned anywhere in the remarks comprising “Number 86”, however.
Those researching the so-called "Enigma of the Hyksos"/"The Hyksos Enigma" will find this collection of quotes and considerations to be of significant interest.
Plutarch was a Greek/Hellenic priest of Apollo at Delphi, a significant Platonic philosopher and the author some of the most interesting and well-written biographies that have come down to us from ancient times. In his Isis and Osiris work, this priest of the Sun goes into great detail regarding what he believed or had heard was the nature of the Cult of Set or Seth in Egypt, and in one of the paragraphs, he (indirectly) provides what I strongly suspect to be the explanation for and the rationale behind the ritual sacrifice of the red heifer (a young, virgin cow) instituted by YHWH in the Book of Numbers.
(If this suspicion, which was also articulated by certain European writers back in the 1800s, be correct, Plutarch's reports are now of greater relevance than they have been for a long time, since there is talk of rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, and of reviving the sacrifice of red heifers.)
Plutarch also mentions the fact that the donkey or ass was one of the animals associated with Seth, a notion which could very well be the reason for the strange veneration of donkeys hinted at in both the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers.
A third example of the amazing contents of Isis and Osiris is Plutarch's mention of Smu as one of the alternatives names for Seth/Typhon, a name which might be the precursor to the later "Hebrew" name of Shimoon/Shimawn (Simon), and which has probably been found on an amphora from the Levant in the ruins of Avaris, in the form of Shimoo.
This is the second version of this e-book.
E.S.
Besides providing a sequel to the story {set forth in the First Kamose Stela, also known as the Carnarvon Tablet; c.f. my digitized edition of Sir Gardiner’s 1916 translation} of this king's war against the Hyksos, it supplies a wealth of incident and detail which tells us much about the foreign relations of the Hyksos kings, the chronology of this obscure period, and the historical context of Kamose’s raid itself.” (Murnane, 1978, p. 277)
This small e-book contains the message of the so-called Second Kamose Stela, which is also known as the Victory Stela. As it has proven to be extremely difficult to find so much as a single document on the Internet containing a complete translation of this seminal and exceedingly important piece of ancient historical information, unless one knows exactly where to look and what to look for (!), I am delighted to be able to present this first fully digitized version of the second part of King Kamose’s account of his war against the Hyksos of Avaris and surrounding regions to my followers here on Academia.edu. (See https://vid.academia.edu/EdmundSchilvold)
If the speech of this King of Thebes sounds a little harsh and boastful, it must be remembered that the native Egyptians, i.e. the nation that had already been inhabiting Egypt for thousands of years at the commencement of the euphemistically named Second Intermediate Period, the period when the “Hyksos Pharaohs” held sway over much of Lower Egypt, including most of the Nile Delta, always viewed the supremacy of the Hyksos or “Asiatics” or Amu over a part of their land as a profoundly alien and undesirable and humiliating state of affairs.
These Hyksos had, moreover, brutally executed (AFP, 2021) Kamose’s father, the Theban king and warrior Seqenenre Tao (who reigned in and around c. 1545 B.C.), so for Kamose, this protracted conflict was not only about the liberation of Egypt from the overlordship and periodical tyranny of the Amu – it was about the restitution of the honor of the royal family that would later, under Kamose’s brother, Ahmose, form the glorious 18th dynasty.
All this a perusal of the native Egyptian sources make entirely evident.
Regarding the three terms mentioned above – Hyksos, Asiatics and Amu -- the latter of the three is the word that is nowadays usually translated into English as “Asiatics” (because these “Asiatics” had come into Egypt from the Levant, and the area now styled the Levant was viewed by the ancients as being part of “Asia”), but which Sir Alan Gardiner, the capable translator of the First Kamose Stela into English (1916), chose to leave un-translated – perhaps because leaving it intact reveals the rather likely connection between this ancient Egyptian term for the ethnic category which produced the Hyksos “Pharaohs” and the “Hebrew” term “Am”, which, in the Tanakh (roughly equivalent to the Old Testament), is often – albeit not always – used to designate the “Israelites”.
E.S.
Upon consideration of that problem, it appeared to us that a response would have to begin with uncovering, if possible, the origins of the Old Testament religion, as set forth in books such as Exodus. However, in order to accomplish that, it seemed abundantly clear to the undersigned that it would be necessary to take a closer look at ancient Egypt.
Why? In the first place, the one indispensable religious rite in both “Israelism” and modern Judaism (or rather “Judaisms”) is male circumcision. However, as we intend to show, there are actually no reasonable grounds for doubting that male circumcision – even as a religious rite – originated in Egypt. [Moreover, the evidence shows that the ancient Egyptians were circumcising themselves at a time significantly predating the one assigned to the “Old Testament” protagonist Abraham.]
In the second place, the name of what is arguably the most important character in the story underlying the foundation of the Nation of Israel – “Moses” or “Moshe” – is, in all likelihood, an Egyptian name, since a similar or identical word forms part of the names of numerous Egyptian pharaohs.
But there is more. The excavations carried out at the Egyptian site “Tell el-Dab’a”, the location of the ancient city of Avaris [, which was situated exceedingly close to the later settlement known as Pi-Ramesses, or simply Rameses/Ramesses], would appear to shed new light on the ancient disagreement between the Jewish [or Judeo-Roman] historian Titus Flavius Josephus (37–100 A.D.) and the Egyptian historian Manetho (c. 300 B.C.) regarding the history of Israel.
To say that Egypt played a central role in Israelite history is, in one sense, not to say anything new at all, but simply to affirm what every orthodox Christian, Jew and Muslim already believes. However, if taken in the sense here intended, it entails a view of Israelite history which is highly controversial, and which will probably remain so for a long time to come, since it goes against and undercuts the stark dichotomy of an “evil” and “oppressive” Egypt versus a “divinely chosen” and “oppressed” Israel set up in Old Testament books such as Exodus, and repeatedly referred to and made use of in later Israelite and Christian works.
Hatshepsut became, in other words, the fourth ruler of the 18th dynasty, and was about seventy years removed from the series of terrible wars that led to the liberation of all Egypt from the occupation and overlordship of the Hyksos (who, according to the Judeo-Roman historian Titus Flavius Josephus, are the “Israelites”, as he explicitly acknowledges in Against Apion, 1:16).
Hatshepsut was probably only matrilineally related to Pharaoh Ahmose I by blood, since Thutmose I is thought to have married into the Royal Family. In her capacity as female ruler of an empire in a late “golden age” state, she could be compared to Queen Victoria of 19th-century Great Britain.
As for the distinction between the 18th and the 17th dynasty, it is somewhat artificial, since Pharaoh Ahmose I was the son of the Theban King Seqenenre Tao, who was executed by the Hyksos after having been captured on the battlefield, and the brother of King Kamose, both of whom are categorized as belonging to the 17th dynasty.
Containing a brief account of what transpired “when the Asiatics” (the Hyksos/the Amu) “were in (…) the Delta, in Avaris.”
With a brief consideration of the probable hidden meaning of the "flaming" or "fiery" serpents attack- and snake on a pole-narrative found in the Book of Numbers.
This revised version (December 2024) also includes our own extensive commentary, as well as a later translation of the First Kamose stela, and a comparison of that to the one executed by Sir Gardiner – a comparison which reveals some very interesting differences between the two texts when it comes to terminology. In addition to this, we have also included what is probably the first fully digitized version of a most fascinating discourse on the etymology and meaning of the place names “Avaris” and “Baal-zephon”, originally published in 1881, in the ground-breaking work A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs: Derived Entirely from the Monuments, composed by the Prussian Egyptologist (1827–1894) Karl Heinrich Brugsch (also known as Brugsch-Bey).
Copyright for this abridged and digitized version of Sir Gardiner’s article, with commentary and various additions, is asserted by Edmund Schilvold (M.Th.).
Front page illustration: The sarcophagus of Kamose, discovered by Auguste Mariette–Bey (1821–1881) at Dra Abu el-Naga near Luxor in 1857. Kamose was the son of the Seqenenre Tao, King of Thebes, who was executed by the Hyksos after having been captured by them on the battlefield, and the brother of Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty.
The two “Western” pieces of literature here referred to are Genesis, with its two creation stories and extensive genealogies, traditionally attributed to Moses, and Plato's singular study of human psychology and its relationship to the evolution and the fortunes of a society, the famous “Republic”. (“Western” is here used in a very loose and somewhat novel sense, of course, encompassing not only the so-called “Occident”, but also much of the region now styled the Middle East.)
The facet of the greatest interest to Western researchers and scholars will likely prove to be the systematic comparison of certain features of the extensive creation story narrated by the Indian Manu (known as Swayambhuva/Svayambhuva Manu) to the two shorter “Biblical” creation accounts so familiar to most Westerners due to the inclusion of “the Pentateuch” in the category of Christian Holy Writ – a comparison which, for the sake of convenience, has been summarized in a table – while those primarily interested in metaphysics, or in ascertaining the Path to Spiritual Enlightenment and Wisdom, of which Plato's philosophy is one prominent manifestation, will probably find the subsequent parts of the abridged version of Manu's Laws, such as those taken from the chapter “On Transmigration and final Beatitude”, to be even more conducive to the rekindling of the Inner Fire.
In addition to this, the reader will also, near the end of the paper, find a short discourse on “the Saraswati river controversy”, as one might call it, and on the bearing the ongoing discussion of the history and historicity of the Saraswati river has on another and equally contested issue, namely that of just how old the ancient Indian or Vedic literature – including, but not limited to, the Vedas – actually is.
Whatever the eventual outcomes of these debates, it seems safe to say that the ancient high civilization now often spoken of as the Indus river valley civilization, or the Harappan civilization, is in fact partially, or perhaps even wholly, synonymous with the ancient Northern Indian or Vedic civilization which, according to the ancient Sanskrit texts and legends, was founded by Manu and the Great Sages, and of which both this legal treatise and the Ramayana epic poem and the Vedas speak, at great length.
In other words, if Manu was, in some sense, the founder of the Indus valley civilization, or at least a part of it – whether he ever appeared on Earth or not – then there could hardly be an ancient literary work deserving of greater attention than the one attributed to him, since only two other civilizations in the recorded history of human kind, the ancient Egyptian and the Sumerian-Akkadian, can compete with the Harappan one, which some have proposed should be styled the Sindhu-Saraswati civilization instead, since the Saraswati river was at the very heart of its imagination.
At the beginning of the paper, the reader will find Sir William Jones' own extensive and insightful, albeit somewhat too critical, foreword -- a wonderful and most scholarly essay which remains a true gem, in spite of the c. 250 years which have gone by since Jones' composed it.
E.S.
This is the longest and most significant literary work I have published since the completion of my first collection of poems, On the Mystical Road of Longing (my second book), back in 2008.
I have called it A Study of the Concept of Nous, since this is an academic paper, and since the nature of Nous or "Intellect" (as it is often translated) is its primary focus, but it could also have been styled The Platonic Heritage of Traditional Christianity, or Why Christians Should Acknowledge That They Are Platonists, or Why We Need To Recover A Direct Connection To The Divine. For in this study, I describe some rather startling discoveries, such as the existence of a Platonic theology resembling the theology hinted at by Christ himself, in his sayings in the Gospels, and later expressed in the Nicene Creed. When one calls to mind that Plato lived some 400 years before the emergence of Christianity, and some 700 years before the council was convened at Nicea, this cannot but be viewed as staggering.
Another discovery I elaborate on is the distinction which may be made, on the basis of Plato's own words, between the Good (Itself) and the Idea of the Good (or the "Form" of the Good, as it is sometimes called), and that this distinction could be seen as referring to the same metaphysical realities (or divine entities) as those Christianity calls Father and Son, or Father and Eternal Word. In fact, Plato himself uses the metaphors of Father and Child (or Offspring), and it seems highly probable that St. Augustine of Hippo was aware of this when he spoke of the Idea or Face of God, as I show the chapter on St. Augustine.
This distinction is closely related to yet another realization I have arrived at, namely that the two different "roads" to or "modes of apprehending" the Supreme God, the "Via Positiva" and "Via Negativa", usually seen as originating with late Platonism (so-called "Neoplatonism") or early medieval Christianity (St. Denis or "Pseudo-Dionysius") are in fact present in the works of Plato himself.
I also touch on the multiple levels of meaning built into the Republic (Norwegian: Staten), which is arguably Plato's most important dialogue, and why this means that the Republic, the main title of which in Greek is Politeia, should actually be called Government, since this term preserves the several levels of meaning alluded to by the original one.
But the most important part of my thesis has to do with Nous (or Noos), and is about the recovery, in both a linguistic, educational and psychological sense, of a complete anthropology, as one might call it, meaning a view of the human being (the individual Soul) which takes into account and aims to reawaken the ability to connect with the Above, i.e. with the metaphysical realities beyond this world of nature and of matter, and, ultimately, with the Supreme Deity, the source of Wisdom and Objective Knowledge.
I find it difficult to believe that I am almost alone, at least in the present day and age, in having seen the astonishing aspects of Platonism (and the momentous implications) I have here mentioned or alluded to, but it does indeed look that way to me at present. One possible way to interpret the near absence of academic works dealing with these subjects is avoidance, meaning that a number of people have found what I have found, but that almost all of them have chosen not to commit their discoveries to writing. Another possibility is that the vast majority of readers of Plato and St. Augustine are so mentally dominated by the zeitgeist (which is that of Materialism and Reductionism, Nominalism and Anti-Essentialism), and by certain schools of interpretation, that they are quite incapable of seeing what the ancient texts actually state and imply. Both are probably contributing to the strange status quo.
I should mention, however, that I am greatly indebted to a modern-day Platonist who, back in the 1990s, gave and published a long series of lectures on Platonic philosophy, namely Dr. Pierre Grimes – as I have stated in the introduction to my thesis. That long series of absolutely fantastic lectures contributed significantly to the first kindling in me of an interest in the Platonic worldview, back in 2009 and 2010. I did not fully understand everything that was said, but many of the surprising messages and the fascinating perspectives remained with me, and when I began the systematic research for my master's thesis, in September 2019, I was able to draw on and take advantage of what I had learned around a decade earlier.
Well, without further ado, as they say, I present to you my thesis, and invite you to download it and read it, free of charge. Please see link below.
P.S.: I welcome polite and Truth-oriented discussion, so if you have questions or comments you believe to be well-founded, or you are a researcher with a similar or different perspective, I would love to hear from you.
This paper may also be viewed on and downloaded from my homepage at https://edmund-schilvold.com/
This is a new version of the master's thesis published here on Academia in late 2020. You can still find the old version elsewhere on my profile.
If that sounds a little mysterious, then please allow me to assure you that the paper itself is, like my master's thesis of 2020, composed in a fairly easy-to-understand and jargon-free English, and that the claim that the Good of Socrates and Plato in fact consists of two different, but intimately related natures, styled the Idea of the Good and the Good Itself, is likely to look much clearer to you once you have read the initial pages.
I believe I am among the first in modern times to perceive and articulate this distinction that Plato arguably makes between the "inner" and the "outer" nature of the metaphysical and universal Good, and to make the case for this new hermeneutical or interpretive approach to the Republic, and I would venture to say that this distinction is as important to grasp, if not even more important, as the one I established between Nous and Dianoia, Divine, Mental Seeing and Logical, Discursive Reasoning, in my master's thesis.
In both of these cases, that of the Highest Metaphysical or Divine Entities and that of the highest mental faculties or powers available to the Incarnated Human Being, the original and highly sophisticated conception held by Plato, and partially set forth in his dialogues, appears to have gradually become distorted and misconstrued, partly as a result of the challenges inherent in the act of translating certain crucial Greek terms into other languages, such as Latin or English, partly because of the overarching tendency towards Simplification observable in almost all the fields of human activity since well before the dawn of the Modern Era (and particularly when it comes to the phenomenon of language), and partly as a result of the two merciless prongs of that which has been the increasingly dominant strand of intellectual and academic thought in Europe for perhaps a thousand years now, namely the radically assertive, dogmatically religious one, completely divorced from Contemplation, Inspiration and Knowledge, and therefore a form of Empiricism, and of Irrationality, and the narrowly "rationalistic", purely logical and calculating and deliberating one, which is also totally cut off from Noesis, from Spirit and from Wisdom, and also, therefore, empirically oriented and irrational, and between which the remains of Ancient Platonism, and of the once living Platonic tradition, have now been caught for a very long time.
In addition to the above mentioned analysis of the Nature or Natures of Socrates' and Plato's Good, which is really a study of Socratic or Platonic theology (which was styled "philosophy" because Platonic philosophy was, at its core, about the Seeking Out and Loving of Wisdom, Sophia), I go into some detail as regards the nature of the Platonic Ideas in general, and the clues to the ancient spectrum of signification of the term "idea" (ἰδέα; idea) provided by its exceedingly ancient Indo-European roots, as well as by probable cognates of that Greek term in present-day Norwegian.
Hint: The disappearance of the "v" in Greek has obscured one of the likely meanings of Plato's crucial term, which was probably closely related to the concept of seeing and being seen. Once the implications of this are grasped, the vistas that open up are truly amazing.
The title of the paper is The Nature of Plato’s Good Revealed: Platonic Theology and Its Relation to Christianity and Judaism: The Case for Distinguishing between the Idea of the Good and the Good Itself.
What is the most plausible interpretation of the term the Idea of the Good – arguably one of the most important of its kind in Plato’s Republic (the Politeia)? In other words, what did Plato intend this term to signify?
The ordinary and established way of reading the Politeia is indeed to view the phrase “the Idea of the Good” as referring to the exact same metaphysical entity as the Good, which is sometimes called the Good Itself.
Contrary to the dominant interpretative tradition, however, which at once seizes upon the seemingly obvious meaning of certain sentences and ignores or downplays the probable import of others, I will argue that it is in fact necessary to distinguish between the Good Itself and the Idea of it, and that these two terms do in fact refer to two distinct, albeit intimately related and virtually inseparable divine genera.
Furthermore, and in conjunction with this argument, I will suggest, and attempt to prove, that the so-called Child or Offspring (506e–507a) of the Good is not actually Helios, the Sun of Generation (Genesis), but the Idea of the Good.
Jesus and Nicodemus – new light shed on the climactic nightly meeting
© Edmund Schilvold (M.Th.) 2023
Other papers and presentations in this series: The Nature of Plato's Good Revealed: Platonic Theology and Its Relation to Christianity and Judaism: The Case for Distinguishing between the Idea of the Good and the Good Itself
Interestingly, the mathematical expositions of this document were copied by a scribe named Ahmose (apparently a fairly common name in Egypt at the time) from an older document created during the reign of the twelfth-dynasty pharaoh Amenemhat III – the same ruler whom it is now believed that one of the so-called “Hyksos” or Tanis Sphinxes depicts. Since the Rhind Papyrus is dated to the 33rd year of the reign of the “Hyksos” or Amu ruler Apepi/Apopi/Apophis, and it would seem, therefore, that the copying from the older original took place in the City of Avaris – the Theban Egyptians did not even recognize Apophis and the other Hyksos monarchs of the 15th dynasty as legitimate rulers – the following question naturally arises: Was one of the reasons for this copying a bond, or some other connection still unknown to us, between Amenemhat III and Apophis?
The first addition of the original mathematical treatise from the 12th dynasty, which is not really a note, but a short introduction to the mathematical content and its origin, is written by Ahmose, the scribe, and gives year 33 of Apophis as the time of copying. The second note (also referred to as “Number 87”), which is found on the verso or backside, mentions what would seem to be the conquest of the City of Heliopolis and the eastern border region fortress of Sile/Tjaru by Ahmose, King of Thebes – soon to become Ahmose I, liberator of Egypt and founder of the 18th dynasty. This note also mentions a year eleven, which is probably the 11th year of the reign of the “Hyksos” monarch Khamudi or Chamudi, son of Apophis. (Source: Wikipedia)
Upon closer examination, the internal evidence of the messages recorded on this papyrus makes it a virtual certainty that it was created in Avaris, by individuals who were sympathetic to, or compelled or obliged to act respectfully and submissively towards, the Hyksos overlordship over and domination of both Upper and Lower Egypt. The most revealing string of words of all is found in the rather strange and disjointed series of brief remarks referred to as “Number 86”, and reads as follows:
“his brother, the steward Kamose”
The “steward” was precisely how the “Hyksos” rulers of the Delta viewed Kamose, King of Thebes, since he was their vassal or subordinate, but to Kamose and his family, this designation would have seemed belittling and degrading. We know this because of what Kamose says of himself and of how he viewed the situation Egypt was in on the two stelae he commanded to be made. On the first, he styles himself “Kamose, granted life, beloved of Amen-re, lord of Thrones of-the-Two-Lands”, and claims that “no man rests, being wasted (?) through servitude (?) of the Setyu” [an alternative Egyptian designation for the Amu], and proclaims that “My desire is to deliver Egypt” (Gardiner, 1916, pp. 107–108). The second features even stronger language; there Kamose says that “{You sent me} a miserable {or disrespectful, or abusive} answer out of your town {, Apophis}.” He then goes on to say that “Your speech is mean when you make me {Kamose} a (mere) ‘prince,’ whereas you are a ‘ruler,’ as if to beg for yourself the execution-block to which you will fall.” (Pritchard, 1969, pp. 554–555)
The brother of Kamose was Ahmose, of course. That second name is not mentioned anywhere in the remarks comprising “Number 86”, however.
Those researching the so-called "Enigma of the Hyksos"/"The Hyksos Enigma" will find this collection of quotes and considerations to be of significant interest.
Plutarch was a Greek/Hellenic priest of Apollo at Delphi, a significant Platonic philosopher and the author some of the most interesting and well-written biographies that have come down to us from ancient times. In his Isis and Osiris work, this priest of the Sun goes into great detail regarding what he believed or had heard was the nature of the Cult of Set or Seth in Egypt, and in one of the paragraphs, he (indirectly) provides what I strongly suspect to be the explanation for and the rationale behind the ritual sacrifice of the red heifer (a young, virgin cow) instituted by YHWH in the Book of Numbers.
(If this suspicion, which was also articulated by certain European writers back in the 1800s, be correct, Plutarch's reports are now of greater relevance than they have been for a long time, since there is talk of rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, and of reviving the sacrifice of red heifers.)
Plutarch also mentions the fact that the donkey or ass was one of the animals associated with Seth, a notion which could very well be the reason for the strange veneration of donkeys hinted at in both the Book of Exodus and the Book of Numbers.
A third example of the amazing contents of Isis and Osiris is Plutarch's mention of Smu as one of the alternatives names for Seth/Typhon, a name which might be the precursor to the later "Hebrew" name of Shimoon/Shimawn (Simon), and which has probably been found on an amphora from the Levant in the ruins of Avaris, in the form of Shimoo.
This is the second version of this e-book.
E.S.
Besides providing a sequel to the story {set forth in the First Kamose Stela, also known as the Carnarvon Tablet; c.f. my digitized edition of Sir Gardiner’s 1916 translation} of this king's war against the Hyksos, it supplies a wealth of incident and detail which tells us much about the foreign relations of the Hyksos kings, the chronology of this obscure period, and the historical context of Kamose’s raid itself.” (Murnane, 1978, p. 277)
This small e-book contains the message of the so-called Second Kamose Stela, which is also known as the Victory Stela. As it has proven to be extremely difficult to find so much as a single document on the Internet containing a complete translation of this seminal and exceedingly important piece of ancient historical information, unless one knows exactly where to look and what to look for (!), I am delighted to be able to present this first fully digitized version of the second part of King Kamose’s account of his war against the Hyksos of Avaris and surrounding regions to my followers here on Academia.edu. (See https://vid.academia.edu/EdmundSchilvold)
If the speech of this King of Thebes sounds a little harsh and boastful, it must be remembered that the native Egyptians, i.e. the nation that had already been inhabiting Egypt for thousands of years at the commencement of the euphemistically named Second Intermediate Period, the period when the “Hyksos Pharaohs” held sway over much of Lower Egypt, including most of the Nile Delta, always viewed the supremacy of the Hyksos or “Asiatics” or Amu over a part of their land as a profoundly alien and undesirable and humiliating state of affairs.
These Hyksos had, moreover, brutally executed (AFP, 2021) Kamose’s father, the Theban king and warrior Seqenenre Tao (who reigned in and around c. 1545 B.C.), so for Kamose, this protracted conflict was not only about the liberation of Egypt from the overlordship and periodical tyranny of the Amu – it was about the restitution of the honor of the royal family that would later, under Kamose’s brother, Ahmose, form the glorious 18th dynasty.
All this a perusal of the native Egyptian sources make entirely evident.
Regarding the three terms mentioned above – Hyksos, Asiatics and Amu -- the latter of the three is the word that is nowadays usually translated into English as “Asiatics” (because these “Asiatics” had come into Egypt from the Levant, and the area now styled the Levant was viewed by the ancients as being part of “Asia”), but which Sir Alan Gardiner, the capable translator of the First Kamose Stela into English (1916), chose to leave un-translated – perhaps because leaving it intact reveals the rather likely connection between this ancient Egyptian term for the ethnic category which produced the Hyksos “Pharaohs” and the “Hebrew” term “Am”, which, in the Tanakh (roughly equivalent to the Old Testament), is often – albeit not always – used to designate the “Israelites”.
E.S.
Upon consideration of that problem, it appeared to us that a response would have to begin with uncovering, if possible, the origins of the Old Testament religion, as set forth in books such as Exodus. However, in order to accomplish that, it seemed abundantly clear to the undersigned that it would be necessary to take a closer look at ancient Egypt.
Why? In the first place, the one indispensable religious rite in both “Israelism” and modern Judaism (or rather “Judaisms”) is male circumcision. However, as we intend to show, there are actually no reasonable grounds for doubting that male circumcision – even as a religious rite – originated in Egypt. [Moreover, the evidence shows that the ancient Egyptians were circumcising themselves at a time significantly predating the one assigned to the “Old Testament” protagonist Abraham.]
In the second place, the name of what is arguably the most important character in the story underlying the foundation of the Nation of Israel – “Moses” or “Moshe” – is, in all likelihood, an Egyptian name, since a similar or identical word forms part of the names of numerous Egyptian pharaohs.
But there is more. The excavations carried out at the Egyptian site “Tell el-Dab’a”, the location of the ancient city of Avaris [, which was situated exceedingly close to the later settlement known as Pi-Ramesses, or simply Rameses/Ramesses], would appear to shed new light on the ancient disagreement between the Jewish [or Judeo-Roman] historian Titus Flavius Josephus (37–100 A.D.) and the Egyptian historian Manetho (c. 300 B.C.) regarding the history of Israel.
To say that Egypt played a central role in Israelite history is, in one sense, not to say anything new at all, but simply to affirm what every orthodox Christian, Jew and Muslim already believes. However, if taken in the sense here intended, it entails a view of Israelite history which is highly controversial, and which will probably remain so for a long time to come, since it goes against and undercuts the stark dichotomy of an “evil” and “oppressive” Egypt versus a “divinely chosen” and “oppressed” Israel set up in Old Testament books such as Exodus, and repeatedly referred to and made use of in later Israelite and Christian works.
Hatshepsut became, in other words, the fourth ruler of the 18th dynasty, and was about seventy years removed from the series of terrible wars that led to the liberation of all Egypt from the occupation and overlordship of the Hyksos (who, according to the Judeo-Roman historian Titus Flavius Josephus, are the “Israelites”, as he explicitly acknowledges in Against Apion, 1:16).
Hatshepsut was probably only matrilineally related to Pharaoh Ahmose I by blood, since Thutmose I is thought to have married into the Royal Family. In her capacity as female ruler of an empire in a late “golden age” state, she could be compared to Queen Victoria of 19th-century Great Britain.
As for the distinction between the 18th and the 17th dynasty, it is somewhat artificial, since Pharaoh Ahmose I was the son of the Theban King Seqenenre Tao, who was executed by the Hyksos after having been captured on the battlefield, and the brother of King Kamose, both of whom are categorized as belonging to the 17th dynasty.
Containing a brief account of what transpired “when the Asiatics” (the Hyksos/the Amu) “were in (…) the Delta, in Avaris.”
With a brief consideration of the probable hidden meaning of the "flaming" or "fiery" serpents attack- and snake on a pole-narrative found in the Book of Numbers.
This revised version (December 2024) also includes our own extensive commentary, as well as a later translation of the First Kamose stela, and a comparison of that to the one executed by Sir Gardiner – a comparison which reveals some very interesting differences between the two texts when it comes to terminology. In addition to this, we have also included what is probably the first fully digitized version of a most fascinating discourse on the etymology and meaning of the place names “Avaris” and “Baal-zephon”, originally published in 1881, in the ground-breaking work A History of Egypt under the Pharaohs: Derived Entirely from the Monuments, composed by the Prussian Egyptologist (1827–1894) Karl Heinrich Brugsch (also known as Brugsch-Bey).
Copyright for this abridged and digitized version of Sir Gardiner’s article, with commentary and various additions, is asserted by Edmund Schilvold (M.Th.).
Front page illustration: The sarcophagus of Kamose, discovered by Auguste Mariette–Bey (1821–1881) at Dra Abu el-Naga near Luxor in 1857. Kamose was the son of the Seqenenre Tao, King of Thebes, who was executed by the Hyksos after having been captured by them on the battlefield, and the brother of Ahmose I, who founded the Eighteenth Dynasty.
The two “Western” pieces of literature here referred to are Genesis, with its two creation stories and extensive genealogies, traditionally attributed to Moses, and Plato's singular study of human psychology and its relationship to the evolution and the fortunes of a society, the famous “Republic”. (“Western” is here used in a very loose and somewhat novel sense, of course, encompassing not only the so-called “Occident”, but also much of the region now styled the Middle East.)
The facet of the greatest interest to Western researchers and scholars will likely prove to be the systematic comparison of certain features of the extensive creation story narrated by the Indian Manu (known as Swayambhuva/Svayambhuva Manu) to the two shorter “Biblical” creation accounts so familiar to most Westerners due to the inclusion of “the Pentateuch” in the category of Christian Holy Writ – a comparison which, for the sake of convenience, has been summarized in a table – while those primarily interested in metaphysics, or in ascertaining the Path to Spiritual Enlightenment and Wisdom, of which Plato's philosophy is one prominent manifestation, will probably find the subsequent parts of the abridged version of Manu's Laws, such as those taken from the chapter “On Transmigration and final Beatitude”, to be even more conducive to the rekindling of the Inner Fire.
In addition to this, the reader will also, near the end of the paper, find a short discourse on “the Saraswati river controversy”, as one might call it, and on the bearing the ongoing discussion of the history and historicity of the Saraswati river has on another and equally contested issue, namely that of just how old the ancient Indian or Vedic literature – including, but not limited to, the Vedas – actually is.
Whatever the eventual outcomes of these debates, it seems safe to say that the ancient high civilization now often spoken of as the Indus river valley civilization, or the Harappan civilization, is in fact partially, or perhaps even wholly, synonymous with the ancient Northern Indian or Vedic civilization which, according to the ancient Sanskrit texts and legends, was founded by Manu and the Great Sages, and of which both this legal treatise and the Ramayana epic poem and the Vedas speak, at great length.
In other words, if Manu was, in some sense, the founder of the Indus valley civilization, or at least a part of it – whether he ever appeared on Earth or not – then there could hardly be an ancient literary work deserving of greater attention than the one attributed to him, since only two other civilizations in the recorded history of human kind, the ancient Egyptian and the Sumerian-Akkadian, can compete with the Harappan one, which some have proposed should be styled the Sindhu-Saraswati civilization instead, since the Saraswati river was at the very heart of its imagination.
At the beginning of the paper, the reader will find Sir William Jones' own extensive and insightful, albeit somewhat too critical, foreword -- a wonderful and most scholarly essay which remains a true gem, in spite of the c. 250 years which have gone by since Jones' composed it.
E.S.