Tag Archives: hidden meanings

Reading Egyptian Art

Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture by Richard H Wilkinson, from Thames & Hudson, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Richard H Wilkinson Reading Egyptian Art from Thames Hudson

“A multi-purpose reference work, providing the key to the hidden meanings in Egyptian art: an encyclopedia of the major signs and symbols, a visual compendium of artistic motifs, a sourcebook of Egyptian religious beliefs and ideas.

The hieroglyphs are thematically organized and include: seated man · seated god · woman nursing child · wedjat eye · ear · breast · bull · cow · cat · lion · foreled of ox · heart · falcon · vulture · ibis · wing · feather · crocodile · frog · scarab beetle · bee · tree · palm branch · lotus · sky · sun · star · mountain · horizon · gateway · shrine · barque · brazier · dje column · fetish of Abydos · gold · ankh · fan · bow · knife · cartouche · Isis knot · board game · sistrum

Full reference section, including a complete list of hieroglyphic signs, a glossary, and a guide to further reading.” — back cover

“Ancient Egyptian art enjoys great popularity in the modern world and is appreciated by people from many walks of life, as well as by students of art history. Yet Egyptian artworks can often appear deceptively simple, and much can remain hidden from view without knowledge of the symbolic repertoire which was used by the ancient artists and craftsmen. Many Egyptian works of art were designed, in fact, to be ‘read’ symbolically and to provide an underlying message which was an essential part of their composition. Colors, materials, numbers, and especially the forms of the written Egyptian hieroglyphs were all part of this symbolic language which, if it is learned, can open up Egyptian art to an understanding for beyond what is seen by the untrained eye. This book has been designed with this goal in mind—to allow the non-specialist to ‘read’ the major hieroglyphics found in Egyptian painting and sculpture and to understand much of the symbolic content of Egyptian art which is usually only accessible to the trained Egyptologist.” — from the Preface

The Wine & The Will

The Wine and the Will: Rabelais’s Bacchic Christianity by Florence M Weinberg, the 1972 first edition hardcover from Wayne State University Press, is part of the collection at the Reading Room.

Florence M Weinberg The Wine & The Will from Wayne State University Press

“In a solid contribution to the field of French Renaissance literature, this study follows the trends of criticism initiated by the revolutionary discoveries of Glison, Febvre, and Screech, focusing on two major emblematic aspects of Rabelais’s novels. Using primary Renaissance iconological material, the author reconstructs the processes by which Renaissance authors (and Rabelais) coded their teachings in symbols that were both entertaining and useful to the learned reader of the time.

The author investigates two major Christian and humanistic aspects of Rabelais’s novels which were meant to test the ingenuity of a learned audience. She takes into account Hellenic and Hellenistic traditions of hermetism—numerology and symbolic iconology in their medieval and Renaissance transformations. The study is designed to show how Rabelais, a Renaissance humanist, fuses comic popular and pagan traditions to convey an evangelical Christian message. It reveals hidden meanings of episodes in Rabelais’s work previously dismissed as simply amusing, and conveys how humor and irony combined in ‘folly’ becomes the vehicle for wisdom.

The symbolism of the wine and the will, explored and understood in all its theological and humanistic complexity, deepens our understanding of Rabelais’s work and Renaissance thought in general.”

 

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