| | The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo Nilous translated by Alexander Turner Cory [1840] |
Horapollo, the traditional author of this work, was one of the last priests of the Ancient Egyptian religion in the fifth century C.E. His only extant work is this, the Hieroglyphica, which claims to be an explanation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs, mixed with a great deal of ancient, and often wrong, natural history. It was translated two centuries later into Greek. The text was rediscovered in 1422, and it was first put into print in 1505.
By the time that Egyptian was finally deciphered in the 19th century, the Hieroglphics of Horapollo fell out of favor. A few of the examples in the beginning of the book turned out to be correct, or close to correct. What makes this book of continued interest is that it can be read in a number of ways: a glimpse into an archaic mindset, a mystical inventory of the universe, or a series of surreal images.
Production Notes: I had to omit the parallel Greek text which appears in the original book. For this reason, I also omitted any footnotes which only pertained to the Greek, not to the English translation. Portions of this book were in Latin. These parts are transcribed verbatim, with no attempt to translate them.