Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination

Jennifer Taylor Westerfeld (Author)

9780812251579

Hardback, published 1 November 2019

256 pages, 15 illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.666 kg

"Jennifer Taylor Westerfeld presents a logical narrative, with a clear arc, describing how Christian writers made use of the cultural heritage of pharaonic Egypt. An excellent treatment of a very complicated subject." (Richard Jasnow, Johns Hopkins University) "Equally conversant with the texts in ancient Egyptian scripts-hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic-and the late antique sources, Jennifer Taylor Westerfeld offers a dynamic account of how late antique authors viewed ancient hieroglyphic script in an increasingly Christian world." (Jitse Dijkstra, University of Ottawa) "[T]he volume sheds considerable light on the discourse around hieroglyphs in Late Antiquity, and how these increasingly mysterious and incomprehensible letters embody the cultural memory of the wisdom of Egypt, either positively as being symbols of divine truth, or negatively as the idolatrous past of a triumphalist Egyptian Christianity, or somewhere in between." (Numen)

Throughout the pharaonic period, hieroglyphs served both practical and aesthetic purposes. Carved on stelae, statues, and temple walls, hieroglyphic inscriptions were one of the most prominent and distinctive features of ancient Egyptian visual culture. For both the literate minority of Egyptians and the vast illiterate majority of the population, hieroglyphs possessed a potent symbolic value that went beyond their capacity to render language visible. For nearly three thousand years, the hieroglyphic script remained closely bound to indigenous notions of religious and cultural identity.
By the late antique period, literacy in hieroglyphs had been almost entirely lost. However, the monumental temples and tombs that marked the Egyptian landscape, together with the hieroglyphic inscriptions that adorned them, still stood as inescapable reminders that Christianity was a relatively new arrival to the ancient land of the pharaohs. In Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination, Jennifer Westerfeld argues that depictions of hieroglyphic inscriptions in late antique Christian texts reflect the authors' attitudes toward Egypt's pharaonic past. Whether hieroglyphs were condemned as idolatrous images or valued as a source of mystical knowledge, control over the representation and interpretation of hieroglyphic texts constituted an important source of Christian authority.
Westerfeld examines the ways in which hieroglyphs are deployed in the works of Eusebius and Augustine, to debate biblical chronology; in Greek, Roman, and patristic sources, to claim that hieroglyphs encoded the mysteries of the Egyptian priesthood; and in a polemical sermon by the fifth-century monastic leader Shenoute of Atripe, to argue that hieroglyphs should be destroyed lest they promote a return to idolatry. She argues that, in the absence of any genuine understanding of hieroglyphic writing, late antique Christian authors were able to take this powerful symbol of Egyptian identity and manipulate it to serve their particular theological and ideological ends.

List of Abbreviations
Note on Translations
Introduction. Confronting Pharaonic Egypt in Late Antiquity
Chapter 1. From Sign to Symbol in Roman Egypt
Chapter 2. Hieroglyphs, Deep History, and Biblical Chronology
Chapter 3. Encoding the Wisdom of Egypt
Chapter 4. Laws for Murdering Men's Souls
Chapter 5. Translating Hieroglyphs, Constructing Authority
Conclusion. Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination
Notes
Bibliography
Index Locorum
Subject Index
Acknowledgments