Ancient Philosophy

Philosophy did not begin with the Greeks.

That is what this first volume argues - and it is not a fringe position. It was the view of the ancient world itself. Diogenes Laërtius, writing in the third century CE, recorded that the Persians had the Magi, the Babylonians had the Chaldeans, the Indians had the Gymnosophists, and the Phoenicians had figures such as Mochus of Sidon, credited by some ancient sources with pioneering atomic theory long before Leucippus and Democritus. These traditions did not disappear - they were deliberately edited out. Somewhere between the ancient world and the modern university curriculum, the story of philosophy was rewritten so that it begins with a small group of Greek men in the sixth century BCE.

Ancient Philosophy, Volume 1: The Prisca Sapientia goes back to the primary sources - Phoenician, Egyptian, Thracian, Persian, Zoroastrian, Vedic, Mesopotamian, and Hermetic - and asks what the history of philosophy looks like when those traditions are taken seriously rather than filed away as myth, religion, or pre-history.

Seven chapters. Seven traditions. Each one reshapes the picture:

Mochus of Sidon - A Phoenician credited in antiquity with originating atomic theory. Strabo, Josephus, and Iamblichus all mention him. Modern philosophy textbooks do not.

Atlas of Libya & Euhermism - Not merely a mythological Titan holding up the sky, but a possible historical astronomer and cosmologist whose story was preserved - and distorted - by Greek mythographers. This chapter also examines a possibility that has gone largely unnoticed: that the island of Panchaea in Euhemerus's Sacred History may be a version of the land the ancient Egyptians called Punt - a place they regarded as sacred, ancestral, and impossibly remote.

Zalmoxis of Thrace - A philosopher-god who staged his own death and resurrection to demonstrate the soul's immortality, and whose ideas appear in Plato's Charmides.

The Birth of Magic - The longest chapter: how the Persian Magi, originally priestly philosophers of the highest order, were gradually reduced to the word we now use for stage tricks, and what was lost in that transformation.

The Gymnosophists and the Upanishads - Alexander's encounter with Indian philosophers; the structural parallels between the Katha Upanishad's chariot of the soul and Plato's Phaedrus; and why Schopenhauer said that reading the Upanishads was the greatest privilege of his life.

Sumer, Babylon, and the Chaldean Tradition - The Epic of Gilgamesh as a philosophical meditation on mortality; the wisdom literature of Mesopotamia; the Apkallu sages; the Chaldean Oracles and their deep influence on Neoplatonism.

The Corpus Hermeticum - The Hermetic treatises that electrified the Renaissance, their probable Egyptian roots, and why Casaubon's famous 1614 dismissal of them as late forgeries may have been the wrong conclusion from the right evidence.

This is not a book that softens its argument to avoid upsetting the curriculum. It is a book that gives you the ancient texts themselves - in full, with context - and makes the case that Western philosophy did not arrive from nowhere. It arrived from somewhere much older, much wider, and far more interesting than the standard account allows.

Includes: Chronological timeline · Glossary of key terms in Greek, Sanskrit, Avestan, Akkadian, and Egyptian · Five original reference maps · Expanded scholarly notes · Full bibliography