the barbs fall off. This, the lord having shown it, was found in the Menelaite nome, at Phalagry, by the embankments, near the Besas plant. It is single-stemmed and red down to the root, the leaves rather curled, and the fruit

The two registers of the whole book collide in one sentence, and neither blinks. First: toûto toû kyríou hypodeíxantos — 'this, the lord having shown it' — the plant was revealed by the god himself. Then, without a breath, a land-registry address: found 'in the Menelaite nome' (a real administrative district of the Delta), 'at Phalagry, by the embankments, near the Besas plant.' Divine revelation and a map reference in the same clause, with equal confidence. The god shows you the plant and you can drive there. That seam is the truth of these texts. To us revelation and empiricism are opposites; to the writer they are one continuous way of knowing — the god points, and the pointing lands at a specific bank of the Nile where the herb actually grows, single-stemmed, red to the root, leaves curled. The description is good enough that botanists have argued over what the plant really was. It is worth holding onto: the same document that summons a bull-faced god at the pole of heaven also tells you, soberly, which embankment to look behind. Both are 'gnosis'; both are true in the way the writer means true.