Ancient Jew Reviews
Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination
by Chance E. Bonar

Jennifer Taylor Westerfeld
Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

In 394 CE, someone inscribed a hieroglyphic graffito written on the
temple of Isis at Philae––the latest known inscription of Egyptian
language in hieroglyphic script. Only after the French removal of the
Rosetta Stone from Fort Julian at Rashid in 1799 have scholars been
able to read hieroglyphic script. This temporal gap in which
understanding hieroglyphic script was lost was not devoid of
speculation, though. In Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique
Imagination, Jennifer Westerfeld demonstrates that despite the
inability to read hieroglyphs, substantial interest in the Egyptian
language and hieroglyphic script was not dampened among late ancient
writers, and particularly not among Christians who felt the need to
make sense of the script.

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