Theuth Myth

The Theuth myth is the narrative Plato places at the close of the [[plato-phaedrus|Phaedrus]] in which Socrates tells the Egyptian story of Theuth — the god-inventor who brings writing to the king Thamus as a remedy for memory — and Thamus’s reply that writing will not be a remedy for memory but an instrument of forgetting: what students commit to written marks they no longer hold in themselves, and the mere semblance of wisdom replaces wisdom in the soul.

The myth functions in the dialogue as a meditation on the difference between living speech — the logos inscribed in the soul through dialectic and recollection — and the external mark that can be copied, circulated, and separated from its source. For the Seba lineage, the Theuth myth is one of the founding texts on the psychology of memory and inner writing: the thesis that genuine knowledge is what the soul remembers from within, and that the externalization of memory into sign and script is always a two-edged gift. The myth is also one of the classical sources through which the Hermes-Thoth figure enters the Western tradition. See plato-phaedrus and anamnesis.

Relationships

• plato-phaedrus
• anamnesis
• logos