The Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher (1601/2–1680) has received considerable scholarly attention over the last couple of decades, but Daniel Stolzenberg's book, offering us a reinterpretation of Kircher's attempt to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs, not only is an important addition to this literature, but also deserves to be read by anyone interested in the encyclopedic and antiquarian scholarship which characterized much of the early seventeenth-century republic of letters.

As Stolzenberg points out, it is Kircher the polymath who has fascinated most modern scholars, as, for that matter, most of his contemporaries. They have therefore tended to see Kircher's investigations into the Egyptian hieroglyphs as part of his search for ‘universal knowledge’. This has been an approach which has provided valuable insight into the common ground beneath Kircher's many different studies of nature, natural philosophy and history. However, this focus on Kircher as an encyclopedist has, in Stolzenberg's opinion, served to obscure important aspects of his career. Instead Kircher's first years in Rome should be understood within his relatively narrow focus on oriental philology, including the Coptic language, and his interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs, capitalizing in particular on two Arabic manuscripts which had come into his possession. As Stolzenberg points out, these Arabic manuscripts provided Kircher with access to traditions unknown or forgotten by Europeans. Consequently Kircher was able to draw on a large number of hitherto unknown oriental authorities, making it possible for him to claim that occult philosophy had its origin in Egypt shortly after the Flood while placing Hermes Trismegistus at the centre of antediluvian knowledge.

Athanasius Kircher arrived in Rome in 1633, immediately after the Galileo affair, and his antiquarian and philological interests undoubtedly proved welcome at a time when natural-philosophical undertakings had become both problematic and risky in the papal city. Furthermore, Kircher was fortunate to find a powerful circle of learned men who were ready to support and facilitate his studies on his arrival, such as Cardinal Francesco Barberini. Kircher, as pointed out by Stolzenberg, owed much of his progress to the strong backing he received from one of the major figures of European antiquarian and oriental research, the French aristocrat Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, who, of course, was a close friend of Barberini. Not surprisingly, Peiresc's death in 1637 and Barberini's simultaneous financial constraints brought a temporary halt to Kircher's grand Egyptian project, before its completion in the 1650s.

Stolzenberg offers a reinterpretation of Kircher's interest in hieroglyphic studies, seeing them as rooted in Kircher's ‘esoteric antiquarianism’ rather than in the Hermetic philosophy which most scholars have considered his main inspiration. This, however, does not mean that Stolzenberg suggests that we should ignore the role of occult philosophy in Kircher's project, but rather that we should realize that Kircher relied on and used Hermetic philosophy in a historical rather than a philosophical way. Kircher was, in other words, primarily concerned with the hieroglyphs as a key to the beliefs and practices of ancient peoples, rather than with a quest for universal truth. Bearing in mind, however, the dangers of what might have been perceived as heterodox natural philosophy in Rome after the Galileo affair, perhaps too much can be read into this. Maybe this was the only safe avenue open to Kircher, i.e. maybe antiquarianism carried less risk than natural philosophy.

Kircher's publications were, of course, subject to the censorship of the Catholic Church. This meant that he had to submit his works to the scrutiny of his superiors within the Jesuit order before publication – a task handled by the College of Revisers, who recommended to the society's General whether or not a book should be printed. The revisers requested changes to Kircher's manuscripts but, as Stolzenberg demonstrates, that did not necessarily mean that Kircher followed their instructions. Comparing the printed version of Oedipus Aegyptiacus with surviving sections of the manuscript, Stolzenberg reveals that Kircher disregarded many of the revisers’ most serious demands. Evidently Kircher, with his powerful patrons, felt able and strong enough to disregard much of the censorship. Counter-Reformation Rome could clearly be a fairly liberal place for some.

Despite focusing on only one aspect of Kircher's many-faceted scholarly interests, namely the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and primarily on the two works which Kircher published on this subject, Obeliscus Pamphilius (1650) and Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1655), Stolzenberg manages to provide a surprisingly broad and different perspective on Kircher's scholarship and its contemporary significance.