Fake ancient Egyptian lore diverted early Egyptology into occult dead ends
Evidence
Pico naively believed in the literal existence of this figure and in what seemed to be cryptic prophecies of the coming of Christ by Hermes Trismegistus. As we shall see, early in the next century Isaac Casaubon was to demonstrate that Pico’s faith in the authenticity and antiquity of the Hermetic writings was misplaced. In the seventeenth century, that fascinating thinker Athanasius Kircher (on whom, see the next chapter) would make a more determined assault on the mysteries of the hieroglyphs. However, primitive Egyptology, based on false premises and fuelling wild hopes of rediscovering lost ancient wisdom, made even less progress in the centuries that immediately followed than Arabic studies did. Study of the language and culture of the ancient Egyptians became the intellectually marginalized province of dabblers in cabalism, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 114
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Purported ancient prophecies of disasters circulate as fabricated or altered texts — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 773