I geroglifici

by Horapollo, Mario Andrea Rigoni, Elena Zanco

"Testo greco a fronte. Gli Hieroglyphica di Orapollo sono l'unico trattato completo sui geroglifici tramandato dall'antichità. Ritenuti il frutto di una conoscenza arcaica, sacra e segreta, ma in realtà composti in epoca tarda (probabilmente nel V sec. d.C.), contengono un'interpretazione simbolica dei geroglifici che ebbe grande successo in epoca rinascimentale e determinò il mito dell'Egitto e della sua scrittura fino alla nascita della moderna egittologia, avvenuta a opera di Champollion nei primi decenni dell'Ottocento. La suggestione di un linguaggio che si riteneva costituito di sole immagini orientò in senso emblematico-analogico la configurazione del pensiero e costituì, in particolare, il modello al quale si richiamò la vastissima letteratura degli emblemi e delle imprese fiorita nel corso del Cinque, del Sei e del Settecento. È questa della Bur la prima traduzione italiana degli Hieroglyphica dopo quella, peraltro incompleta, eseguita nel 1547 di Pietro Vasolli da Fivizzano."

Genres: History, Religion, Egypt, Philosophy, Linguistics

245 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 491

About the author

Horapollo (from Horus Apollo, Ὡραπόλλων) is supposed author of a treatise on Egyptian hieroglyphs, extant in a Greek translation by one Philippus, titled Hieroglyphica, dating to about the 5th century.

Horapollo is mentioned by the Suda (ω 159) as one of the last leaders of Ancient Egyptian priesthood, at a school in Menouthis, near Alexandria, during the reign of Zeno (AD 474–491). According to the Suda, Horapollo had to flee because he was accused of plotting a revolt against the Christians, and his temple to Isis and Osiris was destroyed. Horapollo was later captured and after torture converted to Christianity. Another, earlier, Horapollo alluded to by the Suda was a grammarian from Phanebytis, under Theodosius II (AD 408–450). To this Horapollo the Hieroglyphica was attributed by most 16th-century editors, although there were more occult opinions, identifying Horapollo with Horus himself, or with a pharaoh.

He wrote commentaries on Sophocles, Alcaeus of Mytilene and Homer, and a work (Te~tput&) on places consecrated to the gods. Photius (cod. 279), who calls him a dramatist as well as a grammarian, ascribes to him a history of the foundation and antiquities of Alexandria (unless this is by an Egyptian of the same name, who lived in the reign of Zeno, 474-491).

Hieroglyphica is a text extant from the early medieval period ascribed to Horapollo, but it may be a pseudepigraph.

The text of the Hieroglyphica consists of two books, containing a total of 189 explanations of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The books profess to be a translation from an Egyptian original into Greek by a certain Philippus, of whom nothing is known. The inferior Greek of the translation, and the character of the additions in the second book point to its being of late date; some have even assigned it to the 11th century. The text was discovered in 1419 on the island of Andros, and was taken to Florence by Cristoforo Buondelmonti (it is today kept at the Biblioteca Laurenziana, Plut. 69,27). By the end of the 15th century, the text became immensely popular among humanists, with a first printed edition of the text appearing in 1505, translated into Latin in 1517 by Filippo Fasanini, initiating a long sequence of editions and translations. From the 18th century, the book's authenticity was called into question, but modern Egyptology regards at least the first book as based on real knowledge of hieroglyphs, although confused, and with baroque symbolism and theological speculation, and the book may well originate with the latest remnants of Egyptian priesthood of the 5th century.

This approach of symbolic speculation about hieroglyphs (many of which were originally simple syllabic signs) was popular during Hellenism, whence the early Humanists, down to Athanasius Kircher, inherited the preconception of the hieroglyphs as a magical, symbolic, ideographic script. Though a very large proportion of the statements seem absurd and cannot be accounted for by anything known in the latest and most fanciful usage, there is ample evidence in both books, in individual cases, that the tradition of the values of the hieroglyphic signs was not yet extinct in the days of their author.

The second part of book II treats animal symbolism and allegory, essentially derived from Aristotle, Aelian, Pliny and Artemidorus, and are probably an addition by the Greek translator.

Editions by C Leemans (1835) and AT Cory (1840) with English translation and notes; see also G Rathgeber in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyclopädie; H Schafer, Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache (1905), p. 72.

Reviews

[The Esoteric Jungle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a work seekers in the 1800’s would have risked their lives and spent years to find. It is a writing by perhaps the last Pharaoh-Priest of the Egyptian Royal Mystery-Religion of Priest-Kings; a knowledge base extending back “many, many” thousands of years per their own chronology and that of Herodotus, Manetho, the Book of Seth, Al Biruni, Lady Hahn and any other historian worth their salt.

This individual in the late 400’s AD revealed what near all of Egyptian symbology, in its Hieroglyphics, actually means. It is no late second millennia AD bon ton, scholarly, conjecture. There is no fishing around apocryphal works on Moses trying to understand what each of the animals, crane and snake, signified in order to understand and reconstruct egyptian esoteric concepts back together again. It is the real deal all laid bare and clear. I have already learned much from it.

I don’t like to give away too much on the important content in books but instead enjoy showing, by contrast, the meager remains of all we have left now - having lost such knowledge - in order to raise up its value via the way of negation, bowing backwards in homage that way.

So, a digression now on the loss of such natured multi-dimensional, esoteric knowledge is in order here.

(- end of book review proper. Don’t read on unless you are just in the mood to be really sad for some odd reason).

Though our knowledge should be celebrated today on a technological level; on an organic, comprehensive and cosmic level of all around understanding it is a worthless wilderness which has resulted in formatory, hyper-rationalist overgrowth. Such always is the main cause of bloodshed around the world. Platonists and Esotericists don’t kill each other - never have, never will. Only formatory hyper-rationalists who don’t start with the same primordial concepts already in them bash each other’s heads in. So let’s see how this knowledge of primordial esoteric concepts from a forgotten Egypt and a forgotten Sarmean India and Babylon was entirely lost among man for ages over and over leading to their savagery except for brief moments.

First, Horapollo, for revealing such wisdom, was later tortured near end of his life by the fake Christian’s of Theodosius court who were already in bed with the formatory, exotericist, hyper-rationalist, gold hording Hun cainaanites & amorites the holy Hebrew Old Testament warned concerning the psychological character of more times than it mentioned the word “G_d.” Of course, equally, give credit where credit is due, this Theodosian court was working just as much too though - especially earlier in the century - with blood-hungry white trash as well. By that I mean the Roman Usurper Maximus in the earlier part of the century who really started the 1,400 year long bloodbath Catholic Inquisition (that went on till Napoleon knocked it on it’s A*s). I mean Maximus with his burning of the noble and wise gnostic Priscillians through the vehicle of Theodosius “noble and christian” court in the early 400’s. And he also made a blood bath of Briton, it never recovered in the same way after.

Now Horapollo seemed to be a little after Priscillian (who was burned to death) and a bit after Hypatia (the gracious and wise women beaten to death in the streets by the fake Christians) but he was an elder and earlier to the rising and youthful, last, neo-platonists then: Ammonia Hermai, Olympiodous the Younger, Proclus, etc..If there was a school of consciousness then, they were all likely close to it’s epicenter at that time in between for awhile.

Then - except for a brief resurface around 1750 with the Egyptian order of Masons like St Martin, St Germaine, Cagliostro, Mesmer, De Ghebelin (with his egyptian tarot, he who first revealed the tarot in a sense) and all these such friends of Adams and Jefferson and later Napoleon and Champollion (who insured America would become an un-co-opted nation as it was till about 1817) - there was only the rosy cross Renaissance movement around 1555-1620 before then (and after then what I call the sacred bardic movement in our day from 1964-1996). Other than these - well and a few pockets of time Templari, Sufi and Kaballists worked together off and on between 600 and 1285 - western history has been an aristotelian bloodbath. The German-Russian Romanticists and Victorian Pre-Raphealites were almost too brief to mention.

Let’s look at this. After Hypatia was murdered, the Priscillians burned and Horapollo tortured, Proclus then later had to flee the Roman world for a time. With Proclus (who wrote an extensive work on the ancient epochs of beinghood, which he says the gods signify - a work Photios got to see and comment on, good exoteric Christian that he was - but not all mankind, of course, for it was burned) the roughly 1111 year old school of Pythagoras that Plato restrengthened - and which all western fields of knowledge, especially sciences and maths, owe their origin to - was shut down forever about 529 AD (give or take a supressed diocletian era of 19 to 22 years).

It is hard to find the primordial, archaic, deep gnosis and knowledge after that sad event, closing also whatever movement Horapollo was part of for awhile except in pockets. The Pandeism of the deep ages of massive epochal times of beinghood’s past was lost. Then the neo-platonists only rose again with the school the Medici’s and Da Vinci were part of but something happened to them after such Renaissance too.

The period of Rosicrucianism between true Templari ending in 1285 and true Masonry beginning (out from they of the Rosy Cross in the 1700’s) was a bloody and secretive, up and down, real “war of roses and bloody crosses” in that in between period. Evola found among the secret letters of the Jesuits briefly exposed in world war II a letter between them that said “if you find a neo-platonist don’t waste your time inquiring into them just slit their throat.”

[That said, Catholicism, like Rome and the Roman spirit it is situated in, has always had a dark and light team of peoples inside it that somehow keep each other ignorant of the existence of the other like some two headed creature that doesn’t know the other head even exists. So there were noble Jesuits through history too I have come across, they were just not made privy to the schemes of the power mongering co-opter Pseudo-Jesuits which Malachi Martin, a great Jesuit himself, did a good job in his day of showing still some of the last vestiges of.]

So that is it basically in a scatter gun approach: Hypatia, Priscillian, Horapollo, Proclus, Templars, Rosicrucian Renaissance, pre-co-opted enlightenment Mason, sacred bardic “hippies.” Everything in between these gnostic neo-platonic, multi-dimensional uprise periods have been largely an aristotelian (pseudo-aristotelian I should add - it is recorded Sulla’s creeps got in and changed Aristotle’s texts into that materialist-focused, reductionist, skepticism papp that plagues us to this day) wasteland. I see no difference between the materialist dogmatist majorities and the western religious fundamentalist dogmatist majorities today as both are non neo-platonic, non existentially muliti-dimensional, non shamanically layered and self sensing in themselves so they ever bash each others heads in and form factions that do such and stay in the milk bowl ratiocentric parts of their minds and negative parts of their emotional center only.

Not just for the sake of peace but for Reality, may this knowledge be reawakened then. For there are 11 Cosmoses and 7 aspects to man inside and we all would have no time to become petty if we were trying to imaginatively manifest and create out and explore such layers within us that bring us ever nearer the infinite.

[Callum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically many Renaissance era creators and others were influenced by this highly popular book of a Greek interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which actually turns out to be a multi-authored work mostly based in Greek (mostly) animal/body symbolism, with only some reference to what could be Egyptian symbolism, but even contains reference to symbolism suggesting a Latin origin.

It's still useful, if used with high discretion. A good way to practice lateral thinking, by connecting abstract ideas with a 'real' thing, such as in Book 1, 19. ON GUARD.

This practice could be extended to a ridiculous degree, spanning many volumes, which would be useful to any creator wishing to express such ideas in their work. It's a shame this is the largest such work in Greek to survive from these times.

Interesting to note how much error must be made in history, with creators relying on older works such as these for their source material.

[Katelis Viglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think there is no other recent edition of Hieroglyphica by Orapollo with the greek text and its translation, here in Italian, which such scientific validity. The introduction by the writers is very helpful, detailed, and presents as the pressupossitions for the writing of the text and its social frame, as its impact on contemporaries and subsequent scholars. Also, there is information on the probable authors of this symbology, which of course is not a correct interpretation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the ideological current to which they belonged.

[Nina Misson]

Two partdriges mean pederasty, Horapollo explained. I'm just gonna leave it here.

[DAJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have read anything about the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the early 19th century, you will know that Horapollo's book Hieroglyphica misled Europeans into thinking hieroglyphs were an entirely ideographic script. In 1950, George Boas made the most recent English translation of this infamous book. I'm not entirely satisfied with his edition, but if you want to read the text and don't know another language, your only other option is Alexander Turner Cory's 1840 translation. It's easy to find and read online, but it has even less commentary than Boas and, like many 19th-century texts, it switches into Latin whenever the original text discusses sex, even though Horapollo is hardly explicit about such things.

Boas' main interest was the way Horapollo's book influenced Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, so he based his translation largely on the published Latin version, which is closer to what those people would have read than the earliest extant Greek copies are. His version would be helpful for anyone studying the use of hieroglyphs in early modern times and would probably make a useful companion to The Myth of Egypt and Its Hieroglyphs in European Tradition. Boas' commentary also points out where Horapollo's ideas are similar to those of other ancient authors, from Herodotus to Ammianus Marcellinus. Yet the commentary is not very detailed and gives only a limited impression of the context the book came from. Grafton's 1993 foreword helps in fleshing that context out and in providing references to some more recent sources that touch on it.

Granted, that context is very murky. The book is traditionally attributed to one of two thoroughly Hellenized Egyptians named Horapollo in the fifth century AD, a grandfather and his grandson. Yet the history of the text before the 15th century seems to be entirely unknown. All we can say for sure is that some of the meanings that the author gave to hieroglyphic symbols were correct, but most were not. Therefore, the text does seem to come from a time when some fragmentary knowledge about the script was still extant. Every accurate passage of the Hieroglyphica comes from Book One, which is one of the reasons why Boas says Book Two was probably written by a different author. On top of that, some pieces of the text seem to have been lost, others may have been tacked on to earlier passages, and some passages contradict one another.

For a long time, the only extensive commentary on the Hieroglyphica and its origins was a French-language one by Baudouin van de Walle and Jozef Vergote in Chronique d'Égypte in 1943. The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo Nilous, by Mark Wildish, has probably superseded that commentary, but Boas' book will remain the cheaper and more accessible option for a long time.

[Mateusz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've encountered a reference to this book in one of Erik Hornung's books, therefore decided to read it. Mainly, I was interested in superstructure of semiotic-semantic ideas that could be inbuilt in magickal tech of the hermetic Glass Bead Game. The iconographic, allegoric fabric did not fail me, and I understand why it influenced so many artists and philosophers in the Reneissance. After encountering "nonsense statements" that my friend spotted, and advising me "not to read this bullshit", I retorted, admitting that many things were since discredited by science: "An idiot will deepen his idiocy reading fundamentally such works, wisdom will find pearls, if it knows how to seek and use them properly". With this final statement I leave people aspiring to read this book. Thank you.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short read. Picked up because Jung mentions it in Psychology and Alchemy. The origin of the concept of ouroboros is interesting. My favorite quote is “To symbolize a man who has not travelled out of country, they [the Egyptians] delineate a ANONOCEPHALUS [create with an asses head], because he is neither acquainted with history nor conversant with foreign affairs.”

[N… · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is more of an historical treasure. Truth be told, this text irritated me because of its simplicity , which sounds odd to say. I wanted to know more about the symbolism and the meaning behind it, but I obviously can't be mad at this book. Very quick read.

[Michael Vawser]

Pantheon Hardcover edition
Biblio.com US$23.00