Ancient Egypt in The Western Imagination - Middle Ages and Renaissance

Middle Ages and Renaissance

Following the 7th-century Muslim conquest of Egypt, the West lost direct contact with Egypt and its culture. In Medieval Europe, Egypt was depicted primarily in the illustration and interpretation of the biblical accounts. These illustrations were often quite fanciful, as the iconography and style of ancient Egyptian art, architecture and costume were largely unknown in the West (illustration, right). Dramatic settings of the Plagues of Egypt, the Parting of the Red Sea and the story of Joseph in Egypt, and from the New Testament the Flight into Egypt figured large in medieval illuminated manuscripts. Biblical hermeneutics were primarily theological in nature, and had little to do with historical investigations. Throughout the Middle Ages "mummy", made, if it were genuine, by pounding mummified bodies, was a standard product of apothecary shops.

During the Renaissance the German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher gave a fanciful allegorical "decipherment" of hieroglyphs, and Egypt was thought of as a source of ancient mystic or occult wisdom. In alchemist circles, the prestige of "Egyptians" rose. A few astute scholars, however, were not to be fooled: in the 16th century, Isaac Casaubon unmasked the Corpus Hermeticum of the great Hermes Trismegistus as the work of a Greek writer of about the 4th century CE.