| With this dissertation, I intend to fill a gap in scholarly understanding of Egypt's place in early modern European thought. In fact, the question as to why at the end of the seventeenth century the Neoplatonic view of Egypt was subjected to a radical criticism remains unanswered.; My starting point is the fifteenth-century enthusiastic acceptance of Ficino's theory that the Egyptians possessed a secret learning. In the first chapter, I proceed to analyze how sixteenth-century philosophers saw ancient Egypt as the land of wisdom.; As I demonstrate in the second chapter, in the seventeenth century there were still many intellectuals who claimed that Egyptian wisdom was the source of every true philosophy.; However, after Casaubon's demonstration of the non-authenticity of the Corpus Hermeticum, the number of scholars who rejected the idea that philosophy arose in Egypt increased rapidly.; In the third chapter, I show how in the seventeenth century Protestant historians began to stress the primacy of Hebraic wisdom. Nevertheless, at the end of the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century, Egypt's contribution to knowledge was still seen as an important moment in the advancement of learning.; This scenario changed dramatically in the second half of the seventeenth century when Ehregott Daniel Colberg and Theophile Gale referred to ancient Egypt's knowledge as a "contamination" of original wisdom.; However, the fiercest attack on Egyptian wisdom came from scholars committed to the defense of Christian teaching and dogma against Spinozism and Neoplatonism both assimilated to Egyptian philosophy.; In the third and fourth chapters, I trace the development of the idea of hieroglyphs as a superior form of writing. I demonstrate that Egyptian hieroglyphs followed the fate of Egyptian wisdom.; Finally, the fifth chapter is devoted to an analysis of diaries of travels in Egypt in order to understand how the idea that the Egyptian priestly class had developed a level of learning unreachable in Europe influenced the collective imaginary of the age. |
