Creator
Laurentii Pignorii Patavini (Lorenzo Pignoria, 1571-1631)
Title
Mensa Isiaca … ex Kirchero Chifletioque interpretatio ... Jacobi Philippi Tomasini …
Coverage
Amstelodami, NL
Publisher
Sumptibus Andraeae Frisii
Date
1670, first published under a different title in 1605
Subject
Owner mark: inscribed in ink by R. Alberia?
Description
Pignoria, an Italian antiquarian, collector, scholar, and friend of Galileo, compiled this book known as the first European scholarly work on Egyptology. Illustrated with intaglios, the book’s subject is the “Mensa Isiaca,” a bronze discovered in the ruins of the Temple of Isis in Rome in the 1520s. An object of fascination in the Renaissance, the tablet was the subject of decipherment by Athanasius Kircher. This image, originally from Kircher’s Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652-1654), is of Isis with Harpy, mythical bird, surrounded by Egyptian gems.
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