Ancient Theology and the Antiquarian

This chapter focuses on the historical and doctrinal components of Kircher's hieroglyphic studies. Kircher insisted emphatically on the truth of the historical component of his investigation, which was crucial for his claim to have accurately translated the hieroglyphs. By contrast, his treatment of the doctrinal component was primarily descriptive. Believing that knowledge to be found in the testaments of occult philosophy, Kircher needed familiarity with the Hermetic Corpus, the Chaldean Oracles, and the Kabbalah, just as he needed expertise in paleography and Oriental languages. To use the terminology of nineteenth-century scholarship, one might say that he treated occult philosophy as a Hilfswissenschaft—an auxiliary science, like numismatics or archeology, which the scholar of antiquity must master in order to make correct sense of his sources and bring the past to light.

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