Module 1 - Egypt

What are documented are, among other things, the history of their reception and the interdependencies between reproductions and/or the ‘new images’ that resulted from them. In the early modern period, there was great fascination with antiquity along the Nile and its, in part, mysterious world. Intellectuals, antique dealers, scholars of antiquity, collectors, and artists increasingly examined the ostensible manifestations of Egypt. Their knowledge, however, was based to a great extent on a Greco-Roman tradition, based on which cultic customs (above all Isis and Serapis rituals), visual traditions, and material culture had been assimilated, interpreted, and adapted since Hellenism.
Numerous illustrated publications were created as of the seventeenth century – and still prior to the great, pivotal exploratory expeditions to Egypt of the nineteenth century. They visualize the perception of this ancient culture, the conjectured significance and/or interpretation and function of many objects, the development of its iconography, and the deciphering of hieroglyphs. Based on the images, taxonomic criteria for systematizing the knowledge gathered emerged.
They were derived on the one hand from ‘serially’ produced objects – in particular burial objects such as djed-pillars, scarabs, amulets, and Shabti figures, cameos, and canopic jars—and on the other from unique specimens and/or larger sculptures – as, for example, the Mensa Isiaca, the Florentine ‘offering-bearer’ from the collection of Leonardo Agostini, as well as sphinxes, baboon figurines, relief scenes, tripod stands, obelisks, and so forth.