Tomi III · MDCLII — MDCLIV · Romæ

OEDIPVS AEGYPTIACVS

— Hieroglyphica Æterna —

Athanasius Kircher deciphers the hieroglyphs 170 years before Champollion

Schemhamphorasch · Septvaginta-dvo Nomina Dei

from three verses of Exodus 14:19–21 · each of 72 letters · arranged in columns and permuted

Ex. 14:19 → וַיִּסַּע מַלְאַךְ הָאֱלֹהִים הַהֹלֵךְ לִפְנֵי מַחֲנֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֵּלֶךְ מֵאַחֲרֵיהֶם

14:20 ← וַיָּבֹא בֵּין מַחֲנֵה מִצְרַיִם וּבֵין מַחֲנֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיְהִי הֶעָנָן וְהַחֹשֶׁךְ

14:21 → וַיֵּט מֹשֶׁה אֶת יָדוֹ עַל הַיָּם וַיּוֹלֶךְ יְהוָה אֶת הַיָּם בְּרוּחַ קָדִים עַזָּה

— set out as columns and read top to bottom they yield 72 three-letter names —

— SCHEMHAMPHORASCH · ex Cabala Hebraeorvm · Tomvs II, Capvt xiv —

— CORRESPONDENTIÆ · zodiacvs septemqve planetæ — ex Tomi II, Capvt iij —

0 / 72 nomina inspecta

— uncover 22 names to make the Tabula Bembina appear —

— Revelatio ultima —

TABVLA BEMBINA

Mensa Isiaca · the bronze tablet of Isis

The Tabula Bembina — a first-century bronze Roman altar tablet crowded with figures of Isis, surfaced around 1525 and housed in the collection of Cardinal Bembo. Kircher devoted scores of pages of his Oedipus to it, identifying the central Isis with the kabbalistic Binah and the 72 figures surrounding her with the same 72 names of Shem ha-Mephorash you have just walked through.

Later study would show the tablet to be no Egyptian artefact but a Roman pastiche. Its hieroglyphs are not real signs but ornamental imitations. Every one of Kircher's "decipherments" is fantasy. And out of that fantasy the entire language of Western esotericism grew. Lévi, Mathers, Crowley — all read the Tarot through a vocabulary Kircher first invented for nonexistent hieroglyphs of a nonexistent Egyptian wisdom.

The error became the ground. The substitution, the tradition. That is Oedipus Aegyptiacus.