Egypt, Moses and the Mysteries: Schiller’s “Veiled Image at Sais”

By David Gosselin

“For, he who with an impure hand removes
That mystic veil and sacred covering,
‘He’ said the Godhead, will behold the Truth.”
— “The Veiled Image at Sais”

In Friedrich Schiller’s “The Veiled Image at Sais,” an overly zealous youth guided by a naïve curiosity believes himself ready to unveil the sacred Truth. After having his entreaties rejected by an ancient Egyptian hierophant, the boy decides to break into the temple and try to unveil the Truth for himself.

As in the case of Adam and Eve prematurely eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil while still in the infancy of mankind, an inevitable reckoning with irreversible consequences ensues.

The poem ends on a cautionary note for anyone seeking shortcuts to Truth.

The Veiled Image at Sais

By Friedrich Schiller

Struck by a burning thirst for knowledge, a youth
Travelled across ancient Egyptian lands
—to Sais—to breach the secrets of its priests;
He eagerly made all the needed grades,
But still relentlessly kept climbing higher
—The hierophant could barely tame the boy.
“What good is one small part without the whole?”
Exclaimed the eager youth, without a pause.
“For, can the Truth be really more or less?
The way you speak of Truth is as if it
Were nothing more than a mere earthly sum,
As if a question of just more or less.
Surely, it’s something whole and without parts;
The Truth is pure and indivisible!
Remove one note and harmony dissolves,
Remove one color and the rainbow fades,
And nothing will be known, so long as that
One color, or one note, remains absent.

While the priest and the eager youth conversed,
They stood amid the precincts of a temple
Where a strange statue stood silent and veiled.
It captured the excited boy’s attention,
And so he turned towards the wise old priest
And asked, “What lies hidden beneath the veil?”
“Truth,” answered the old priest. “What!” said the boy,
“The Truth alone is all I care about,
And you would think of hiding it from me?”

“Only the Godhead can answer to that,”
Said the Egyptian priest. “And let no man
Reach for that veil,” he said, “Until I do;
For, he who with an impure hand removes
That mystic veil and sacred covering,
‘He’ said the Godhead, will behold the Truth.”
“How strange! And have you never tried to lift
The veil yourself, you who worship the Truth?”
“I never have, I never felt the need.”
“Could it be that only a thin veil stands
Between me and the Truth of things?” he asked.
“And a divine decree,” rejoined the old priest,
“The weight is heavier than you might think;
Though it may seem light to the hand—heavy—
So heavy can it weigh upon the mind.”
Lost in his thoughts, the youth made his way home,
But he now burned with a desire to know.
Restless, sleepless, tossing around in bed,
He rolled for hours, until at last the clock
Struck midnight and he rose, and quietly
Found himself drawn by a powerful force.
He climbed the walls, then after one more spring,
He found himself beneath the sacred dome.

Behold! The child in utter solitude,
Stood amid nothing but the deathly silence,
A silence broken only by the echo
Of every step he took across the vault.
And through the aperture of the high dome,
The quiet moon rained down her pallid beams
Just on the place where shining in the light,
The statue stood, concealed by its long veil.
The boy began to walk towards the form:
Hesitant, he moved his impious hand
Towards the statue, and then suddenly,
A chill ran down his spine; an unseen hand
Repulsed the boy, “What do you want,” echoed
A tortured voice within his shaken breast.
“Would you dare profane the Holiest One?”
“It’s true, declared the oracle, ‘Let none
Venture to raise the veil until I do.’
But did he not say Truth as well would rise?
Whatever it may be, I’ll raise the veil.”
And then he said, “I will behold the Truth!”
“Behold!”
His own words echoed back in mocking tone.

And with that word he cast the veil away.
What form his harrowed eyes met I don’t know,
But when the warm, fresh morning’s breeze returned,
The priests found a pale and unconscious boy
Lying before the pedestal of Isis.
He never shared what he had seen that night,
From that day on his happiness had fled;
Deep sorrow brought him to an early grave.
When pressed by questioners, he only said,
“Woe unto him, who comes to Truth through guilt:
Delight will forever be lost to him.”

Translation © David B. Gosselin

Reflections and Commentary

Was our young truth seeker really guided by a love of Truth, or merely by a puerile desire to possess the object of his infatuation, with little appreciation for what it might entail or exact? While he was eager to have his demands met, the boy may have underestimated Truth’s demands on him.

As in the case of any serious relationship whose requirements may far outweigh one’s abilities or expectations, Schiller’s poem offers us a dramatic rendering of the most demanding and tribulating of all relationships: our relationship with Truth.

The priest cautioned the youth to “Let no man lift the veil until I do,” but his cautionary words were of no avail. Schiller’s enigmatic poem begs the question: is man ever ready to wrestle with divine wisdom? If so, how should he go about it; if not, how should he guard against its crushing revelations?

The “Veiled Image at Sais” offers at least a hint:

“For, he who with an impure hand removes
That mystic veil and sacred covering,
‘He’ said the Godhead, will behold the Truth.”

Not unlike the story of Daedalus warning his son Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, Schiller’s work presents the story of a boy whose curiosity was undeterred by even the wisest counsel. The poem highlights the fate of a passionate but ultimately foolish inquirer whose intentions, while not motivated by any ill-will or a lust for power, were arguably just as misguided as those of a reckless upstart or clumsy thief—and perhaps more fatal.

In his eagerness to lift the veil, the boy treats the sacred Truth as though it were something he could possess. But was our young wannabe initiate really guided by a love of Truth, or merely by an infantile desire to possess the object of his longing, without paying much mind to what Truth would desire from him? After all, how much control will one really have once he breaches the sacred temple and lifts the veil?

For the man who exits the temple is never the same as the one who enters it.

Moses and the Secrets of Egypt

Further insight into the question of Egypt, ancient history and the illusive “mysteries” can be found in Schiller’s historical study “The Mission of Moses.” Published in 1790, it presents research and ideas Schiller would have originally delivered in the form of a lecture during his time teaching at Jena University.

Schiller begins by acknowledging the debt modern Western civilization owes to the revelations of Mosaic law.

“Indeed, in a certain sense it is irrefutably true that we owe the Mosaic religion a large part of the enlightenment we enjoy today. For through them a precious truth, which reason, left to itself, would have discovered only after a slow development, the doctrine of the one God, was temporarily spread among the people and maintained among them as an object of blind faith until it could finally mature into a concept of reason in the brighter minds. As a result, a large part of the human race was spared all the sad, misleading paths to which belief in polytheism must ultimately lead, and the Hebrew constitution received the exclusive advantage that the religion of the wise did not stand in direct contradiction to the popular religion, as was the case with the enlightened pagans[…]”

Schiller suggests that Moses’ revelatory wisdom indicated he was likely an initiate of the Ancient Egyptian mysteries. A Hebrew whose people had been enslaved by a corrupted Egyptian society would by a twist of fate become an Egyptian-educated Jew who would have been privy to the highest Egyptian mysteries, and thus have been in the position to spread this wisdom in a new revelatory form among his own downtrodden people.

Schiller writes:

“Here the great hand of Providence, which unravels the most tangled knot by the simplest means, must move us to admiration – but not that providence which interferes with the economy of nature through unfathomable miracles, but through that which gives nature itself an economy which prescribes the achievement of extraordinary things in the quietest possible manner. A born Egyptian lacked the necessary invitation and favor of the Hebrews to proclaim himself as their Savior. A mere Hebrew must have lacked the strength and spirit for this undertaking. So what course did fate choose? It took a Hebrew, but snatched him early from his brute people, and gave him the enjoyment of Egyptian wisdom; and so a Hebrew, Egyptian-educated, became the instrument by which that nation escaped from slavery.”

As far as the story of Moses’ upbringing goes, Schiller writes:

“The Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and gave him the name Moses because he had been rescued from the water. So from a child of a slave and a victim of death, he became the son of a king’s daughter and as such shared in all the advantages that the children of kings enjoyed. The priests, to whose order he belonged at the very moment when he was incorporated into the royal family, now undertook his education, and instructed him in all the Egyptian wisdom which was the subsequent property of their class. Indeed, it is probable that they did not withhold any of their secrets from him, since a passage by the Egyptian historian Manetho describes Moses as an apostate of the Egyptian religion and a priest who had escaped from Heliopolis, leading us to suspect he had reached the rank of Egyptian priest.”

Moses’ insights also indicate he was intimately acquainted with the original Egyptian lore and wisdom before they were fully corrupted by a degenerate Egyptian priesthood:

“In order, therefore, to determine what Moses might have received in this school, and what role the education he received under the Egyptian priests may have played in his subsequent legislation, we must enter into a closer investigation of this institution and what was taught and practiced in it, hearing the testimony of ancient writers. The apostle Stephen already informs us that he was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. The historian Philo says that Moses was initiated by the Egyptian priests into the philosophy of symbols and hieroglyphs, as well as into the mysteries of the sacred animals. This very testimony is confirmed by several, and once one has cast a glance at what were called the Egyptian mysteries, a remarkable resemblance will emerge between these mysteries and what Moses subsequently did and ordained.

“The worship of God among the oldest peoples, as is well known, very soon passed into polytheism and superstition, and even among those generations whom Scripture tells us to be worshipers of the true God, the ideas of the Supreme Being were neither pure nor noble, nor anything less founded as a clear, rational insight. But as soon as the classes were separated through the better organization of civil society and the establishment of a proper state and the concern for divine things became the purview of a special class, as soon as the human spirit received leisure through freedom from all distracting worries to devote itself entirely to contemplating itself and surrender to nature, and as soon as clearer views were finally been taken into account concerning the the physical economy of nature, Reason finally triumphed over those primitive errors, and the idea of ​​a Supreme Being was refined. The idea of ​​a general connection of things inevitably led to the concept of a single Supreme Understanding, and where should that idea have germinated rather than in the head of a priest? Since Egypt was the first cultivated state known to history, and the oldest mysteries were originally written in Egypt, it was here in all probability that the first idea of ​​the unity of the Supreme Being occurred in a human mind. The happy discoverer of this soul-elevating idea then selected capable subjects from those around him, to whom he imparted this sacred treasure, and so it was inherited from one thinker to another – for who knows how many? – generations, until it finally became the property of a well-organized caste capable of understanding and developing it further.”

Of course, contemplating the true nature of a divine and single Creator in a more than superficial way is no small task. So Schiller observes:

“But since a certain amount of knowledge and a certain training of the mind are required to correctly grasp and apply the idea of ​​a single God, since belief in divine unity necessarily brings with it contempt for polytheism, which was the dominant religion, it was soon realized that it would be imprudent and even dangerous to spread this idea publicly and generally. Without first overthrowing the traditional gods of the state and showing them in their ridiculous nakedness, one could not promise acceptance of this new doctrine. But one could neither foresee nor hope that each of those whom the old superstition was ridiculed would immediately be able to rise to the pure and difficult idea of ​​truth. Furthermore, the entire civil constitution was based on this superstition; if this were to collapse, all the pillars on which the entire edifice of the state was supported would be torn down at the same time. And it was still very uncertain whether the new religion that was put in its place would be capable of supporting the entire edifice.”

The dangers of haphazardly propounding the nature of the true God before fanaticism-prone masses had to be considered by the defenders of genuine wisdom and eternal truth. As a result, hieroglyphics became instrumental in both concealing and preserving a deeper meaning, even if it meant misleading the uninitiated in the process—at least until more favorable conditions arose for a general uplifting of the human condition.

Schiller writes:

“Hieroglyphics were chosen, a descriptive pictorial script that hid a general concept in a collection of sensual symbols and was based on a few arbitrary rules that had been agreed upon. Since these enlightened men knew from idolatry how powerfully the imagination and senses can influence young hearts, they had no hesitation in using this device of deception to the advantage of the truth. So they brought the new concepts into the soul with a certain sensual solemnity, and through all sorts of measures appropriate to this purpose, they put the mind of their apprentice in a state of passionate movement that would make it receptive to the new truth. The purifications that the person to be initiated had to carry out were of this kind: washing and sprinkling, wrapping themselves in linen clothes, abstaining from all sensual pleasures, tension and elevation of the spirit through singing, significant silence, alternation between darkness and light, and the like.”

What Were the Mysteries?

Ancient City of Memphis – Art by Raphael Lacoste)

“The Veiled Image at Sais” may in a veiled way allude to Schiller’s own understanding of the mysteries of Egypt and origins of Mosaic Law, as well as how such sacred wisdom could have been corrupted over time by bad actors.

As far as the content of the mysteries is concerned, Schiller writes:

“The ceremonies, associated with those mysterious images and hieroglyphs, and the hidden truths which lay hidden in these hieroglyphs and were prepared by those customs, were collectively understood under the name of the Mysteries. They had their seat in the temples of Isis and Serapis and were the model, subsequently supporting the mysteries in Eleusis and Samothrace, and in more recent times the order of Freemasons was formed.

“It seems beyond doubt that the content of the most ancient mysteries in Heliopolis and Memphis, while in their uncorrupted states, was unity of God and refutation of paganism, and that the immortality of the soul was propounded therein. Regardless of which of these important insights were part of it, they called themselves observers or epopts because the recognition of a previously hidden truth can be compared with the transition from darkness to light, perhaps also because they really and actually looked at the newly recognized truths in sensory images.”

The beliefs of the Epopts are described as follows:

“The Epopts recognized a single, highest cause of all things, a primal force of nature, the essence of all beings, which was the same as the Demiurgos of the Greek sages. Nothing is more sublime than the simple grandeur with which they spoke of the Creator of the world. In order to distinguish him in a very decisive way, they didn’t give him a name at all. A name, they said, is merely a need for distinction; He who is alone has no need of a name, because there is no one with whom he could be confused. Under an old statue of Isis one read the words: “I am what is there,” and on a pyramid at Sais one found the ancient, strange inscription: “I am everything that is, that was, and that will be; no mortal man has lifted my veil.”

However, in the case of the Egyptian mysteries (as opposed to Moses’ mission) Schiller’s poem may also point to the ways in which true divine wisdom may be concealed or distorted, sometimes for noble reasons, some craven, and others outright evil.

“But as unworthy members gradually forced their way into the circle of initiates, as the institution lost its initial purity, what was initially only a mere emergency aid, namely the secret, was gradually turned into the purpose of the institution, and thus supplanted by superstition. In order to purify the people and make them capable of receiving the truth, they sought their own advancement by misleading the people more and more and plunging them ever deeper into superstition. Priestly arts now took the place of those innocent, pure intentions, and the very institution that was supposed to preserve and carefully spread knowledge of the true and one God began to become the most powerful means of promoting the opposite, finally degenerating into a full-blown school of idolatry. Hierophants, in order not to lose control over minds and to always keep expectations tense, found it useful to hold off the revelation for longer and longer, which would forever remove all false expectations, and to restrict access to the sanctuary through all sorts of theatrical means to make trials more difficult. At last the key to the hieroglyphs and secret figures was completely lost, and now these were taken for the truth itself, which they were initially only intended to envelop.”

The Mystery of Mysteries?

From the Double Temple of Isis and Serapis in Rome: Nilus, the river god of Egypt’s Nile, with cornucopia, wheatsheaf, sphinx, and crocodile

As the need for Moses’ intervention in Egypt made clear, sacred knowledge can often be corrupted, and its promise is often used as the favorite tool of a special “magician” class and gnostic priesthood whose aim is always to keep populations mystified in order to preserve its own worldly power.

Schiller describes the various tricks used to mystify initiates in ancient times, which parallel the kinds of techniques found in, say, modern-day Scientology, Masonic and Satanic lodges, and whole medley of “mystery” across time:

“Inside the temple, the person to be initiated was presented with various sacred devices that expressed a secret meaning. Among these was a sacred chest, which was called the coffin of Serapis, and which in its origins was perhaps intended to be a symbol of hidden wisdom, but later, when the institution degenerated, it was used to perform “magic” tricks used by a deceptive priesthood. Carrying this chest around was the privilege of the priests or a special class of servants of the sanctuary, who were therefore also called kistophors. No one but the Hierophant was allowed to uncover this box or even touch it. One who had the audacity to open it is said to have suddenly gone mad.”

But as Schiller recognized both in the times of Ancient Egypt and in his own days (as depicted in his story “The Ghost Seer”), the promise of secret knowledge, hidden wisdom or “gnosis” has always been one of the chief spiritual and psychological tools of power used by an “Elect” to manipulate populations and maintain control over the minds of people. Assuming one is prepared and wishes to lift the veil, he must without exception be ready to skip the many magical tricks and games of the magicians, ancient or modern, who have every reason to conceal and distort eternal truths for the sake of preserving their own temporal interests.

In conclusion, our young protagonist seemed to believe the Truth was something he could possess, perhaps exemplifying what Schiller referred to as “the vain, childish pride of wanting to exclusively possess the deity.” However, perhaps the reality is no one can possess Truth. Having once entered in its inner sanctums, one must choose to let Her possess him or face the fated consequences of prematurely breaching the temple. The fate of those who choose to bite off more than they can chew is already widely known.

David Gosselin is a poet, researcher, and translator in Montreal, Canada. He is the founding editor of The Chain​ed Muse. His personal Substack is Age of Muses, where he publishes historical deep-dives, original poetry and a variety of writings for a new renaissance.