The Allure of the Ancient

Receptions of the Ancient Middle East, Ca. 1600-1800
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-90-04-12932-0
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 80, 404 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 896 g

Reihe: Intersections

The Allure of the Ancient investigates how the ancient Middle East was imagined and appropriated for artistic, scholarly, and political purposes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bringing together scholars of the ancient and early modern worlds, the volume approaches reception history from an interdisciplinary perspective, asking how early modern artists and scholars interpreted ancient Middle Eastern civilizations—such as Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia—and how their interpretations were shaped by early modern contexts and concerns.

The volume’s chapters cross disciplinary boundaries in their explorations of art, philosophy, science, and literature, as well as geographical boundaries, spanning from Europe to the Caribbean to Latin America.

Contributors are: Elisa Boeri, Mark Darlow, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, Florian Ebeling, Margaret Geoga, Diane Greco Josefowicz, Andrea L. Middleton, Julia Prest, Felipe Rojas Silva, Maryam Sanjabi, Michael Seymour, John Steele, and Daniel Stolzenberg.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Geoga, Margaret

Steele, John

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Altorientalische Geschichte & Archäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theatergeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Editors’ Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Notes on the Editors

Notes on the Contributors

1 Introduction

Margaret Geoga and John Steele

2 Images of Babylon in Early Modern Europe

Michael Seymour

3 Between Babylon and Rome: The Panorama of Constantinople (1662)

Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby

4 Collapsing Identities of Ptolemaic Queens in Early Modern Rome

Andrea L. Middleton

5 Reading the East: From the Enlightenment to the Utopic Projects of the Revolutionary Architects

Elisa Boeri

6 Freemasons and Platonism: The Allure of Egypt between Big Ideas and Small Details

Florian Ebeling

7 Zoroaster’s French Moment

Maryam Sanjabi

8 Ancient and Modern: Citational Practices and the Status of Ancient Egypt in Jean Terrasson’s Séthos

Margaret Geoga

9 Representing Egypt in French Enlightenment Musical Theatre: From Gherardi to the Opéra national

Mark Darlow

10 From Tragic Hero to Creole Businesswoman: Voltaire’s Semiramis and Her Parodies in 18th-Century France and Saint-Domingue

Julia Prest

11 Babylonians in Sixteenth-Century Mexico: Comparative Antiquarianism in the Work of Sahagún

Felipe Rojas Silva

12 Egypt and Babylon in Eighteenth-Century European Histories of Astronomy

John Steele

13 What Was Oriental Studies in Early Modern Europe? “Oriental Languages” and the Making of a Discipline

Daniel Stolzenberg

14 On Religious Systems: An Early Essay by Jean-François Champollion

Diane Greco Josefowicz

Index Nominum

Über Autor(innen)

Margaret Geoga, Ph.D. (2020, Brown University), is an Egyptologist specializing in ancient Egyptian literature and the reception history of ancient Egypt. She has published on the transmission and reception of Egyptian poetry, as well as ancient Egyptian religion.

John Steele, Ph.D. (1998, Durham University), is Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity at Brown University. He has published extensively on the history of astronomy, with a particular focus on Babylonian astronomy and its later reception.