The moral reading of Know yourself

Meaning

In a moral sense. The narrator says that the Greeks, whom he portrays as pupils of the Egyptians, understood “Know yourself” chiefly this way and thereby misunderstood its natural-philosophical scope. The adverb qualifies an asserted historical reception, not the meaning of the maxim in every context. The supplied edition does not independently establish the Egyptian genealogy. Nor should the criticism erase the treatise’s own sustained insistence on moral preparation and inward self-examination.