The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo Nilous

Hieroglyphic Semantics in Late Antiquity

Mark Wildish

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351376532
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The main aim of this book is to reconstruct a philosophical context for the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, a late 5th century Greek study of hieroglyphic writing. In addition to reviewing and drawing on earlier approaches it explores the range of signs and meanings for which Horapollo is interested in giving explanations, whether there are characteristic types of explanations given, what conception of language in general and of hieroglyphic Egyptian in particular the explanations of the meanings of the glyphs presuppose, and what explicit indications there are of having been informed or influenced by philosophical theories of meaning, signs, and interpretation.

1 The text and author of the Hieroglyphica

The Hieroglyphics of Horus Apollo Nilous (Ὥρου Ἀπόλλωνος Νειλώου Ἱερογλυφικά, Horapollonis Niloi Hieroglyphica) has a print history spanning five hundred years, during which thirty texts and translations have appeared in fifty-three substantive versions and sixty-six issues.¹ Though most popular during the 16th century, the textual tradition survives through editions once every generation or two into the 20th century, which saw at least five more, including a new editio optima. All editions have of course focussed principally on the Greek text itself, or on offering a translation of it, more often than not into Latin, though also into French, Italian, English, German, Spanish, and most recently Polish.²

The first manuscript³ containing the Hieroglyphica to be brought to European public attention in the Early Modern period was, according to a late subscriptio appearing on folio 75^r, bought on the island of Andros in the Aegean in June 1419 by Cristoforo, presbyter of Bundelmonti. It contained three texts: Philostratus’ Vita Apollonii Tyanensis, Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, and Proclus’ Elementa physica. The first is written in two different manuscript hands, the latter two texts in a third. In addition to the Vita Apollonii and the Elementa physica, both of which appear together with the Hieroglyphica elsewhere,⁴ Aristotle’s Ethica ad Eudemum also appears as a companion piece in several other manuscripts.⁵ However, despite the presence of Harpocration’s Lexicon in Bibliotheca Vaticana graec. 871 (perhaps suggestive of an early opinion as to the text’s generic affiliations), in general, the texts associated with the Hieroglyphica in the manuscript sources are too varied a miscellany to indicate any judgement as to formal genre characteristics which might have informed the inclusion of the Hieroglyphica amongst them. With it were included Pletho’s Magica eloquia Magorum in both B. V. graec. 1011 and Bibliotheca Cardinalis Radulphi: Codex 49 and in October 1505 the first printed text of Horapollo was issued in an Aldine edition bound with Aesop’s Vita et Fabellae, the writings of several other Greek fabulists, and a Collectio proverbiorum. Whether or not this may provide some indication of the kinds of associations the text had at that time, it is in general reasonable to suppose that these are precisely the kind of associations that either informed or were developed as part of later judgements as to possible interpretative strategies.⁶ Even into the modern period we find Gardiner, for example, claiming that the text comprises ‘mystical assertions’, ‘grotesque allegorical reasons’, and ‘fantastic explanations’.⁷

In standard edited versions of the text, Book One comprises seventy sections; Book Two, one hundred and nineteen sections. These divisions pose few (if any) significant editorial problems in context since there is little room for doubt as to where each (typically short) explanation, or sequence of explanations, begins and ends.⁸ In other words, it is unproblematic to observe that the ratio of meanings per glyph is significantly lower in Book Two, where the meaning prefigures the glyph, than in Book One, where the movement is vice versa. The sections of Book One are fewer, though those of Book Two are on the whole briefer – all of which lend weight to the claim of the incipit to Book Two, according to which it is largely⁹ the work of a subsequent editor (called Philip in the incipit to Book One) of Horapollo’s original book.

On the one hand, insofar as it exhibits features in common with surviving Egyptian onomastica and Greek or Roman bilingual glossaries, Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica may (as historically has in fact been common) be situated generically within the tradition of historical linguistics. In a related context (also historically prominent as an approach to the text) it also exhibits features in common with late Imperial or early mediaeval encyclopaedias and natural history miscellanies, which, though materially related to the glossaries, can, on the other hand, be situated generically within the exegetical tradition, as noted earlier, to which the 5th–6th century encyclopaedias of Martianus Capella and Cassiodor, or the Etymologiae sive Origines of Isidore of Seville belong, and which, on this view, it prefigures.¹⁰ The long-standing precedent of these approaches has, however, given rise to an apparent incongruity: is the purpose of the text as a matter of fact glossographical (and therefore subject to critique arising out of developments within the decipherment project), or encyclopaedic and therefore to be assessed purely as a compendium of natural lore? The incongruity of a text half glossary, half encyclopaedia is, however, so I shall argue, wholly illusory. It is an illusion that arises precisely because the Hieroglyphica has typically been read purely as a catalogue of linguistic and natural claims, on which basis, both as linguistic and natural history, it has been found unsatisfactory.

Since the propositional analysis has failed to clarify the nature of the relationship between the natural and the hieroglyphic material, what I wish to argue instead is that under these circumstances it seems reasonable to look for an interpretation of the text as one which offers an interpretation, rather than a series of claims. The assumption that the Hieroglyphica is as a work of historical linguistics and natural history therefore needs to be reassessed in light of the methodological motivation for its structure. My starting-point for this is that the text is both explicit in its hermeneutic objectives and structurally unambiguous in the application thereof.

There is little rubric or preliminary framing to the text as presented, but there are brief statements at the beginning and end of each of the two books. The incipit to the second book reads:

ΩΡΑΠΟΛΛΩΝΟΣ ΝΕΙΛΩΟΥ τῆς τῶν παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις ἱερογλυφικῶν γραμμάτων ἑρμηνείας ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ ΔΕΥΤΕΡΟΝ. Διὰ δὲ τῆς δευτέρας πραγματείας, περὶ τῶν λοιπῶν τὸν λὸγον ὑγιῆ σοι παραστήσομαι ἃ δὲ καὶ ἐξ ἄλλων ἀντιγράφων, οὐκ ἔχοντά τινα ἐξήγησιν, ἀναγκαίως ὑπέταξα.¹¹

The SECOND BOOK OF HORAPOLLO OF THE NILE on the interpretation of the hieroglyphic writings among the Egyptians. Now, in this second treatise I will set forth for you a sound account of the remaining ones which, having no explanation, I have necessarily added from other copies too.

The terms ‘interpretation’ (ἑρμηνεία) and ‘explanation’ (ἐξήγησις) crucially refer to genres of interpretative endeavour.¹² An inventory of the hieroglyphic signs explained in the text (and comprising glyphic depictions of items of almost always identifiably Egyptian provenance), arranged according to thematic relationships, provides an index rerum in parallel with the index signorum. Thus the realia fall into the same categories as the hieroglyphic signs they are intended to explain: mammals, birds, fish, and cosmological phenomena, as well as man and his occupations.¹³ The corresponding exegeses, therefore, draw precisely on resources that collate information on realia, the depictions of which the exegeses are intended to explain. However, an investigation designed to determine the extent of the influence of such resources on the exegetical content of the Hieroglyphica – except insofar as this might further support observations on the aggregation of source materials – will provide only a reconstruction of the line of historical continuity of the content preserved by the text, and not a clarification of the conditions under which they are presented. Specifically in the Hieroglyphica, then, uncovering the underlying principle of exegetic judgement will have to be determined by the precise nature of the relationship between the hieroglyphic signs and natural signs established in the interpretative exegeses themselves, rather than through source-criticism.

The text is certainly very unlikely to have been originally written in Egyptian (even in part), or to have appeared in Egyptian at any subsequent point,¹⁴ and the manuscript text itself is in fact in Greek. The attribution, by an apparent redactor named Philip, of the material treated (mostly in Book One) to Horos Apollon is nonetheless unlikely to be pseudepigraphical – an attempt to establish Egyptian provenance, and hence authorial authority. It is more likely to be a genuine acknowledgement of authorship. Annotations and additions by Philip, clearly indicated as such in the text at the beginning of Book Two, are structurally identifiable elements of the ‘interpretation of hieroglyphic writing among Egyptians’ (τῶν παρ’ Αἰγυπτίοις ἱερογλυφικῶν γραμμάτων ἑρμηνεία).

Suda Ω 159 records two Horapollones (usually identified as grandfather and grandson), both grammatici. The elder Horapollo ( fl. 408–450 A.D.) of Phaenebythis (a village in the Egyptian nome of Panopolis), taught in Alexandria, and afterwards in Constantinople, under Theodosius II. He was author of an enquiry into sacred enclosures or temples (Τεμενικά), commentaries (ὑπομνήματα) on Sophocles and Alcaeus, and a volume entitled On Homer (Εἰς Ὅμηρον), the choice of these three authors possibly reflecti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The text and author of the Hieroglyphica
• 2 Linguistic signs
• 3 Natural signs
• 4 Divine symbols
• 5 The cosmos of the Hieroglyphica
• Conclusion
• Appendixes
• Bibliography
• Index