Oedipus Aegyptiacus

Oedipus aegyptiacus is the most important work of Athanasius Kircher about Egyptology.

The three -volume book, full of artful illustrations and charts, was published in the years 1652 to 1654 in Rome. Kircher claimed that his sources for Oedipus aegyptiacus the Chaldean Astrology, the Hebrew Kabbalah, Greek mythology, Pythagorean mathematics, Arabian alchemy and Latin philology were. As already Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino before him, sought Kircher also the knowledge of pre-Christian cultures to establish the Catholic world.

The third book of Oedipus aegyptiacus deals exclusively with Kircher's attempts to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics. The primary source for Kircher's study was the Mensa Isiaca, also board of Bembo named after its acquisition by Cardinal Pietro Bembo shortly after the sack of Rome in the year 1527th The panel of Bembo is made of bronze and niello, measures 126 x 75 cm and displays various Egyptian deities. In the center of the table sits Isis, which is " the polymorphous all -containing Universal Idea - " inherent.

Kircher's Oedipus aegyptiacus is a classic example of syncretic and eclectic scholarship in the late Renaissance. It is representative of the baroque flamboyance in the minds of scholars influenced by the hermetic before the modern era of science. His interpretations of hieroglyphic texts tend to be wordy and ominous.

Kircher was respected in the 17th century for his studies of Egyptian hieroglyphics; his exact contemporary of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) paid him recognition as an Egyptologist and his studies of the hieroglyphs:

" But no one is likely to profound the Ocean of Doctrine did, beyond did eminent example of industrious learning, Kircherus. "

"But no man is probably as sound beyond measure in the ocean of this doctrine, as the laudable example befleißigten learning, Kircher. "

In fact, however, remained Kircher deciphering the true meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics fails, only the Frenchman Jean -François Champollion finally succeeded in deciphering through the study of the Rosetta Stone in the 1822 bis 1824.