Jeremy Norman's entry on HistoryofInformation.com concerns a passage from Platon's Phèdre, written around 370 BC, in which Socrate recounts the Egyptian myth of the creation of writing. Norman distills its substance into two sentences: Socrate charges that writing weakens the necessity and power of memory, and allows one to feign understanding rather than truly understand. The rest of the page consists of the quoted dialogue, the passage from 274c to 275b, accompanied by a map, an illustration of a bust of Socrate held at the Louvre, and a list of themes.
In the narrative, Socrate says he heard of an ancient god of Naucratis, in Egypt, named Theuth, whose sacred bird is the ibis. Theuth invented numbers, calculation, geometry, astronomy, dice and board games, and above all letters. At that time the god Thamus, whom the Greeks call Ammon, reigns in the great city of Upper Egypt that the Greeks call Thebes. Theuth presents his inventions to him so that they may be passed on to the other Egyptians. Thamus asks what each one is for and expresses praise or blame according to his judgment.
When it comes to letters, Theuth claims they will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory: he has found an elixir of memory and wisdom. Thamus replies that one man may originate an art, but another must judge its usefulness or harm for those who use it. Theuth, the father of letters, out of affection attributes to them a power opposite to the one they actually have.
According to Thamus, the invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, since they will no longer exercise their memory. Their reliance on external marks, which are not part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory. Theuth has therefore invented not an elixir of memory but one of reminding. He offers his students the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom: they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know a great deal, while for the most part being ignorant and difficult to deal with, since they are not wise but only appear to be.
The page classifies the entry under three themes of the timeline: writing, paleography, calligraphy, and epigraphy; education, scholarship, reading, and literacy; memory, mnemonics, and data storage. It states a last update date of August 27, 2026.