Reviving Ancient Egypt in the Renaissance Hieroglyph: Humanist Aspirations to Immortality

IF 0.3 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY
Arts Pub Date : 2024-07-08 DOI:10.3390/arts13040116
Rebecca M. Howard
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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.
在文艺复兴中复兴古埃及象形文字:人文主义者对不朽的渴望
文艺复兴时期的人文主义者莱昂-巴蒂斯塔-阿尔贝蒂(Leon Battista Alberti)在他的《论建筑的艺术》中写道,古埃及人相信字母语言终有一天会全部失传,但他们使用的象形书写方法却能被世界各地的知识分子轻松理解,并一直延续到未来。在意大利方尖碑上发现的古埃及象形文字以及声称可以翻译古埃及文字的霍拉波罗的《象形文字》被重新欣赏的同时,阿尔贝蒂等文艺复兴时期的人文主义者开始痴迷于这种古老的非字母书写形式。此外,意大利人文主义者对伊特鲁里亚祖先失传语言的认识日益加深,这进一步点燃了他们的焦虑,担心自己的思想有一天会变得难以理解。随着 "埃及狂热 "在意大利半岛的蔓延,一些人从古埃及人的象形文字中看到了消除恐惧的答案,因为他们从埃及文字中看到了世界通用语言的潜力。因此,许多人根据埃及人的象形文字创造了文艺复兴时期的象形文字。这篇文章探讨了这些新象形文字的成败得失,现代早期的人文主义者和艺术家们创造了这些新象形文字,希望一种脱离字母文字的语言能够更好地向后人传达他们的名字和贡献。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Arts
Arts HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
自引率
40.00%
发文量
104
审稿时长
11 weeks
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