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Storytime: Reading the Hermetic Kyranides, Part I
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[NB: We have communicated with Richard Greenfield, and he very kindly filled us in on the new edition of the Kyranides underway, to wit: Richard Greenfield and Alexander Alexakis, editors. The Kyranides: A Handbook of Traditional Medicine from Byzantium. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. Dumbarton Oaks/Harvard University Press, Washington, DC/Cambridge, MA, forthcoming 2028.]
We begin an exploration of the Kyranides with discussion of the very messy state of the texts and of some of the weird treasures hidden within it, from acrostic poems to ancient Hermetic books. We then have a read through of the compiler’s introduction, which gives us many interesting tangents to chip off on.
Works Cited in this Episode:
Primary:
Proklos on ‘Kyranos’ (maybe): In R. II p. 318 l. 22 Kroll.
Dimitris Kamakis, editor. Die Kyraniden. Number 76 in Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie. Anton Hain, Meisenheim, 1976.
Secondary:
Klaus Alpers. Untersuchungen zum griechischen Physiologus und den Kyraniden. Vestigia Bibliae: Jahrbuch des deutschen Bibel-Archivs, 6:12–87, 1984., citing pp. 17 ff. on the dating of the Kyranis.
Harland’s translation of the introduction to Book I: https://www.philipharland.com/Blog/2023/01/assyrian-wisdom-the-kyranides-cyranides-on-a-journey-to-learn-from-a-foreign-inscription-fourth-century-ce-or-earlier/
M.D. Litwa. Hermetica II. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018, p. 286–7.
Jean-Pierre Mahé, editor. Hermès Trismégiste: Paralipomènes. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2019.
Charles-Émile Ruelle. Les Cyranides. In F. de Mély, editor, Les lapidaires de l’antiquite et du moyen age. Ernest Leroux, Paris, 1898-1899.
Silvius Fabricius
August 24, 2026
I would assume the interpretation of Κυρανίδες as “queens” is by taking it as some sort of feminine derivative (patronymic?) of κῦρος, or perhaps more likely κοίρανος, which to my understanding would have been pronounced identically to Κύρανος during the earlier Byzantine period (both οι and υ pronounced as /y/).
(Re: κοίρανος, this is apparently an exact cognate with Herjann, a common name of Óðin in Norse, and I suspect an Old English cognate is the source of the figure “Herne the Hunter”.)
Earl Fontainelle
August 25, 2026
Silvius,
Exactly right about the pronunciations and assumed derivation. But I think what happened (as with the Hermetic “Poimandres”) is that readers were faced with this weird word and then decided it must mean x,y,z. From our perspective, we need to shrug and say “Maybe”, or at least that’s my minimal take on the evidence.