JF Ptak Science Books Post 2390
“HIEROGLYPHICS: Language of the ancient Egyptians, invented by the priests to conceal their shameful secrets. To think that there are people who understand them! But perhaps the whole thing is just a hoax?”—Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Received Ideas1
[Reproduced from the Hachette reprint]
I’ve written a number of posts about pre-robot robots, robots before they were named, mechanical entities of some human qualities that performed tasks or played games, inanimate objects that engaged in articulated motion, with most of the early creations being in the early 19th century. I never have done the back-fill, the earliest days in which (if you squinted very mightily) robots may have appeared.
This came to mind today while writing about the great Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680), a man considered to “know everything” and who if he didn’t know it made the knowledge come out of something else so help him god; he was a man of intense energy, extremely formidable learning, high creativity, and who seemingly possessed the talent to forget nothing. Today’s episode (with the frequently-appearing Kircher in this blog) is just a small addition to the cosmology thread and the history of dots series.
The image that drew me in is found in Kircher’s magnum opus, his Oedipous Aegyptiacus, printed in three volumes from 1652-1654–it is a half-miracle sort of work–it is astonishing, universal, fabulous, and in many cases, far-reaching….too far-reaching, especially in the case of his deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, where he pretty much gets it all wrong. In volume one (page 262), however there is an image of theraphim (“Theraphim Hebraeorum”), which are small-to-largish statuettes/statues which to save sp[ace and time here are seen by many as being something along the order of a household idol. (It is a much more complex story than this, but I think that for at least one aspect in defining these objects that this is basically correct.)
The illustration makes it seem as though the small statues have etched speech on extended tongues–in some versions of the theraphim story the statues do speak in their way. That makes them speaking statues. And speaking statues are–in a very antiquarian way–robots, or at least they are worthy of that consideration in my book. Or blog.
And this reminds me of another “speaking” statue: Memnom, of the the two Colossi at Thebes.This monument was said to be a “miracle” (by Colistatus, in the 3rd century CE) and that the only difference between it and a human was a body. Memnon was said to react to eh morning Sun, emitting a sound or song or speech; and again, at sunset, a more lamenting sound would issue from the statue, which would sometimes be accompanied by tears. The songs/cries were said to be returned by Echo, who responded with, well, an echo, which is what all of this might be in regards to the modern sense of the robot, and to the created artificial life of the future.
Notes:
1. This fine quote was found in an interesting article “Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity (2013) – Introduction” by Daniel Stolzenber,
here.
