Kircher (Athanasius) Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 4 parts in 3 vol., first edition, engraved portrait frontispiece of Ferdinand III, 2 folding maps and 12 folding plates, woodcut and engraved illustrations in text, small wormhole to inner margin of quires NN-QQ in first part of vol. 2, minor browning and foxing, a few tears to some folding plates with no loss, but generally a very good copy, titles with ownership inscription 'Ex Bibl. franc. Aug. de Pontae...', other notes by the same hand erased, flyleaf of vol. 2 with pasted plate from another work showing a specimen of the 'Scriptura coelestis', 18th-century reversed calf, Signet Library copy with gilt stamp to covers, [Merrill, 10; Caillet II, 5788; Sommervogel IV, 1052, 1053; D. Stolzenberg, Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the secrets of antiquity, Chicago, 2013, p. 6], folio, Rome, Vitale Mascardi, 1652-54.

⁂ The culmination of Kircher's researches on Egyptology, "Kircher's broadest and boldest statement about the meaning of Egypt in the mid-seventeenth century" (Findlen, Athanasius Kircher: the last man who knew everything, p. 31). Printed between 1652 and 1654, the work "investigates ancient Egypt's history, religion, art, politics, grammar, mathematics, mechanics, medicine, alchemy, magic, theology and compared them with all other Eastern cultures, from the Chinese ideograms to the Hebrew Kabbalah and the language of Indian Brahmins" (Eco, Cercavano gli unicorni, p. 9). Signet Library copy, sold at Sotheby's in 1978 for $1700.