In the middle of the seventeenth century a German Jesuit living in Rome published an immense work in which he promised to reveal the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and, with them, the most ancient wisdom of humankind. It was Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus. The title itself is a programme: just as Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, so the author meant to solve the riddle of Egypt.
The author
Athanasius Kircher was one of the most celebrated scholars of his day. A Jesuit, he taught for many years at the Collegio Romano and wrote on an astonishing range of subjects: magnetism, optics, music, geology, linguistics, China, volcanoes. At the Collegio Romano he assembled a museum of rare and curious objects that became a destination for distinguished visitors. His curiosity was encyclopaedic, and his work is one of the most typical expressions of Baroque culture.
The work
The Oedipus Aegyptiacus was printed in Rome between 1652 and 1654, in several large-format, richly illustrated tomes. It was dedicated to the Emperor Ferdinand III of Habsburg, who had supported the undertaking.
Its contents can be summed up in three broad areas:
| Area | Content |
|---|---|
| History and religion | Egyptian theology, cults, relations with other ancient religions |
| Comparative wisdom | Kabbalah, astrology, alchemy, magic, mathematics and Hermetic philosophy |
| Interpretation | the reading of obelisks and hieroglyphic inscriptions |
A perennial wisdom
At the root of Kircher's project lies an idea widespread in the Renaissance: the existence of an original wisdom, revealed to the first human beings and handed down through Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian priests, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato. According to this view, hieroglyphs were not a phonetic script but symbols containing profound theological and philosophical concepts.
Kircher was aware of the late dating of the Hermetic texts proposed by Isaac Casaubon in 1614, but he continued to regard Hermes as a very ancient figure and Egyptian wisdom as a preparation for Christianity. His Egypt is therefore a philosophical Egypt, closer to the Renaissance imagination than to history.
Kircher and the obelisks of Rome
Kircher's interest in Egypt also had a very concrete side. In seventeenth-century Rome the popes were having ancient obelisks re-erected in the city's squares, and Kircher was called on to interpret their inscriptions. In 1650 he published the Obeliscus Pamphilius, devoted to the obelisk that Gian Lorenzo Bernini placed on the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona. The Oedipus was thus born in a climate in which ancient Egypt was literally before the eyes of the Romans.
The interpretations of the hieroglyphs
The heart of the work is the translation of hieroglyphic inscriptions, especially those on the obelisks of Rome. Kircher attributed a complex symbolic meaning to each sign, deriving from them long texts of a mystical and theological character.
Today we know these readings were unfounded. When Jean-François Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs in 1822, it became clear that Egyptian writing had an essential phonetic component and that the inscriptions contained mostly names of rulers, titles and religious formulas. Kircher's translations turned out to be constructions of his learned imagination.
The merit of Coptic
It would nonetheless be unfair to reduce Kircher's work to a failure. He was among the first European scholars to argue that Coptic, the language of the Christians of Egypt, was the last stage of the language of the ancient Egyptians. He published Coptic grammars and lexicons that contributed to the study of the language. Champollion himself made extensive use of Coptic in his decipherment. In this sense, Kircher's insight was one of the premises of the discovery that would refute his translations.
The Hermetic encyclopaedia
The Oedipus Aegyptiacus is also a vast encyclopaedia of the esotericism of its time. Kircher gathers information on Jewish Kabbalah, with the tree of the sefirot; on Egyptian and Chaldean astrology; on amulets and talismans; on alchemy and natural magic. Although he often distances himself from the practices he describes, the work became a source of information on these subjects for many readers.
How to read it today
Reading the Oedipus Aegyptiacus requires holding two perspectives together:
- recognise that its interpretations of the hieroglyphs are historically wrong;
- appreciate the work as evidence of the Hermetic and Baroque imagination;
- assess its real contribution to Coptic studies;
- look at the illustrations, which are an extraordinary iconographic heritage.
For the Studio Esoterico Cornelio the book recalls an important lesson: a passion for ancient wisdom can produce precious insights, but it must always be tested against the facts.
In short
- The Jesuit Athanasius Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus was printed in Rome between 1652 and 1654.
- It was dedicated to Emperor Ferdinand III and aimed to reveal the wisdom of the hieroglyphs.
- It rested on the idea of a perennial wisdom handed down by Hermes and the Egyptians.
- Its translations of the hieroglyphs were refuted by Champollion's decipherment in 1822.
- Its work on Coptic, by contrast, was valuable and useful to later scholarship.
