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- Title
Reviving Ancient Egypt in the Renaissance Hieroglyph: Humanist Aspirations to Immortality.
- Authors
Howard, Rebecca M.
- Abstract
In his On the Art of Building, Renaissance humanist Leon Battista Alberti wrote that the ancient Egyptians believed that alphabetical languages would one day all be lost, but the pictorial method of writing they used could be understood easily by intellectuals everywhere and far into the future. Amidst a renewed appreciation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics found on obelisks in Italy and the discovery of Horapollo's Hieroglyphica, which purported to translate the language, Renaissance humanists like Alberti developed an obsession with this ancient form of non-alphabetical writing. Additionally, a growing awareness of the lost language of their Etruscan ancestors further ignited an anxiety among Italian humanists that their own ideas might one day become unintelligible. As Egyptomania spread through the Italian peninsula, some saw an answer to their fears in the pictorial hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians, for they perceived, in Egyptian writing, the potential for a universal language. Thus, many created Renaissance hieroglyphs based on those of the Egyptians. This essay examines the successes and failures of these neo-hieroglyphs, which early modern humanists and artists created hoping that a language divorced from alphabetical text might better convey the memory of their names and contributions to posterity.
- Subjects
UNIVERSAL language; ITALIAN language; HUMANISTS; LANGUAGE awareness; HIEROGLYPHICS
- Publication
Arts (2076-0752), 2024, Vol 13, Issue 4, p116
- ISSN
2076-0752
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3390/arts13040116