Hi Anders.

I think your question is too difficult to answer with any degree of certainty. We associate Hermeticism primarily with Egypt. According to the conventional story, the Egyptian civilisation with which we are familiar came into being c3000 BCE. Before that it was two separate cultures, not so well organised.

'Alternative' historians think it goes back earlier. On that theme there seem to be strange but remarkable similarities between Egyptian and Sumerian culture, which would take it back earlier. I can't say at what point what we call Hermeticism originated in this process.

The other obvious candidate for the source of the Perennial Philosophy is Hinduism - the Vedas and the Upanishads. These are believed to have been put down in writing later than the Pyramid texts, but we don't know how far they may go back in oral traditions.

There is also another intriguing possibility. It is accepted history that there was some kind of Aryan invasion of India. The conventional dating is somewhere between 2000 and 1500 BCE. Who exactly were these 'Aryans'? It's unclear. There is what would probably be considered a 'conspiracy theory' that there was a Sumerian connection here also.

Again, according to conventional history, Sumer is the origin of human civilisation, a large leap forward from what preceded. So it's pure speculation, but could Sumer be the origin of the Perennial Philosophy, which then diverged into Hermeticism and Hinduism?