The allure of the ancient: receptions of the ancient Middle East, ca. 1600-1800

Abstract

"The Allure of the Ancient investigates how the ancient Middle East was imagined and appropriated for artistic, scholarly, and political purposes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bringing together scholars of the ancient and early modern worlds, the volume approaches reception history from an interdisciplinary perspective, asking how early modern artists and scholars interpreted ancient Middle Eastern civilizations - such as Egypt, Babylonia, and Persia - and how their interpretations were shaped by early modern contexts and concerns. The volume's chapters cross disciplinary boundaries in their explorations of art, philosophy, science, and literature, as well as geographical boundaries, spanning from Europe to the Caribbean to Latin America"--

Contents

Images of Babylon in early modern Europe / Michael Seymour -- Between Babylon and Rome : the panorama of Constantinople (1662) / Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby -- Collapsing identities of Ptolemaic queens in early modern Rome / Andrea L. Middleton -- Reading the East : from the Enlightenment to the utopic projects of the revolutionary architects / Elisa Boeri -- Freemasons and Platonism : the allure of Egypt between big ideas and small details / Florian Ebeling -- Zoraster's French moment / Maryam Sanjabi -- Ancient and modern : citational practices and the status of ancient in Jean Terrasson's Séthos / Margaret Geoga -- Representing Egypt in French Enlightenment musical theatre : from Gherardi to the Opéra national / Mark Darlow -- From tragic hero to Creole businesswoman : Voltaire's Semiramis and her parodies in 18th-century France and Saint-Domingue / Julia Prest -- Babylonians in sixteenth-century Mexico : comparative antiquarianism in teh work of Sahagún / Felipe Rojas Silva -- Egypt and Babylon in eighteenth-century European histories of astronomy / John Steele -- What was oriental studies in early modern Europe? "Oriental languages" and the making of a discipline / Daniel Stolzenberg -- On religious systems : an early essay by Jean-François Champolion / Diane Greco Josefowicz.