Classical and scriptural prestige, not practical utility, drove early Orientalist language study

Evidence

Academic Orientalists for the most part were interested in the classical period of whatever language or society it was that they studied. Not until quite late in the century, with the single major exception of Napoleon’s Institut d’Égypte, was much attention given to the academic study of the modern, or actual, Orient. Moreover, the Orient studied was a textual universe by and large; the impact of the Orient was made through books and manuscripts, not, as in the impress of Greece on the Renaissance, through mimetic artifacts like sculpture and pottery. Even the rapport between an Orientalist and the Orient was textual, so much so that it is reported of some of the early-nineteenth-century German Orientalists that their first view of an eight-armed Indian statue cured them completely of their Orientalist taste. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 151 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Early Orientalism studied classical texts, not living societies — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 151; Early modern Orientalism was a competition to decipher God’s original language; Orientalist scholars often spoke Arabic too classically for ordinary Arabs — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists…, 373

Broader Connections

• Early Orientalism studied classical texts, not living societies #corroborates (0.95) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 151