The works on view in this exhibition are linked to the themes of language, decipherment, and translation. This introduction offers historical context of the objects and people who influenced the contemporary works on display.
Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) was one of the first Europeans to study ancient Egypt and its hieroglyphic script. He built his scholarship on the works of Horapollo in the fourth century, Ibn Wahshiyya in the tenth century, and other scholars of the Islamic Golden Age, as well as the Italian antiquaries of the sixteenth century, whose works Hieroglyphica and the Mensa Isiaca are on view in the gallery. Kircher relied on this firsthand documentation as he studied objects that were brought to Rome, such as the obelisk relocated at the Piazza Navona (see reproduction below). Obelisks, ancient Egyptian stone monuments, were removed from their original locations and placed in major cities around the world including Rome after the Roman conquest.
Over his career of 45 years and his myriad publications, Kircher established himself as a prolific, versatile thinker and inventor with diverse interests ranging from Ancient Egypt to the technology of his day. Kircher established the linguistic link between Coptic and ancient Egyptian, and his writings would be key to the successful decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion two centuries later. Starting in 1633, Kircher was a professor of mathematics at the Collegio Romano. One of his achievements in Rome was to found the Kircherian Museum in 1651, where he displayed the Collegio’s collection as a cabinet of curiosities of objects, including those from antiquity and scientific inquiry, serving as a popular attraction for the public as well as visiting scholars.
Allusions to Kircher’s achievements can be found in many works, including the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Umberto Eco, as well as the art of Marcel Duchamp and contemporary artists such as Timothy Ely.
Entrance Hall of the Kircherian Museum
Plate from The Celebrated Museum of the Roman College of the Society of Jesus; A facsimile of the 1678 Amsterdam edition of Giorgio de Sepi's description of Athanasius Kircher's Museum. (Saint Joseph's University Press, 2015)
The Pamphile obelisk at the Piazza Navona, image originally from Kircher's Obeliscus Pamphilius ... (Rome 1650).
Plate from The Celebrated Museum of the Roman College of the Society of Jesus; A facsimile of the 1678 Amsterdam edition of Giorgio de Sepi's description of Athanasius Kircher's Museum. (Saint Joseph's University Press, 2015)
Timothy C. Ely. The Flight into Egypt: Binding the Book. Foreword by Terence McKenna. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1995.
Printed edition of unique book completed in 1985.
Print from unique book entitled The Flight into Egypt: The Third Magnitude (2009-2010). Image courtesy of Timothy C. Ely. Book in the Letterform Archive collection, San Francisco, CA.
Ely is an American painter, graphic artist, and bookbinder known for creating single-copy handmade books. He has developed his own personal writing system he calls Cribriform which he integrates into his works: “Language doesn’t have to be verbal or visual. It can be a sensation, it can be in the form of signals. My marks depart from meaning but they’re not meaningless. They just have a different internal matrix.”
Timothy Ely interview with Steven Clay (The Flight into Egypt, 1995).
