From an old national writing to a universal means of communication. The transmutation of the Egyptian hieroglyphs in the Renaissance

Im Vorfeld der Öffentlichen Frühjahrssitzung hält Prof. Dr. Jean Winand, der am Nachmittag als Korrespondierendes Mitglied in die Akademie aufgenommen wird, einen Vortrag in englischer Sprache.

Jean Winand
Université de Liège, Département des sciences de l’antiquité, Égyptologie

From an old national writing to a universal means of communication. The transmutation of the Egyptian hieroglyphs in the Renaissance

By the end of the 4th century AD, one can safely assume that there was nobody left in Egypt who was capable of understanding, let alone composing, a text in hieroglyphs. At the beginning of the 15th century, ancient Egypt sparked a renewed interest among humanists. Several reasons can explain this. First, in 1420, a curious Greek manuscript was brought to Florence. Among other texts, it contains a treatise, called Aigyptiaca, attributed to a certain Horapollo, whose 189 notices give explanations of some Egyptian signs. Second, humanists were rediscovering classical authors who had incidentally mentioned hieroglyphs, such as Diodorus, Plutarch, Apuleius, Clement of Alexandria, and Ammianus Marcellinus. But humanists like Marsile Ficino and Erasmus were above all influenced by the philosophers of the Platonic school – Plato himself, but also Porphyry, Plotinus, and Iamblichus – who had developed an impressive theoretical apparatus for explaining the relationship between words and ideas. Finally, Renaissance people could engage again with Egyptian monuments, either during travels in the Nile Valley or thanks to restoration work in the Eternal City. It was within this broader context that an original theory about Egyptian hieroglyphs emerged, which presented them as a universal means of expression, detached from any language in particular. Artists put this into practice by composing their own neo-hieroglyphic inscriptions, evidence of which survives in printed editions and on a few paintings. Although the fashion of the neo-hieroglyphs did not last more than a century, the theory on which it was based survived in the extravagant work of Father Athanasius Kircher, who marshalled the Egyptian hieroglyphs in the service of Faith.