Leszek Zinkow

The Kłosy [The Ears of Grain] Polish weekly magazine (1865–1890) devoted some space to the history of culture, literature, the issues of scientific progress, travels, and descriptions of foreign countries. The paper discusses texts referring to matters of the ancient Near East as published in that journal. It includes a review and analysis of press materials dealing with various themes and includes the following: notes, reviews, announcements, articles, digressive travel reports, fiction, etc. They were presented in the context of the specificity of this kind of press and understanding of 19th-century intellectual needs. The more prominent or characteristic publications are generally discussed, while the summary presents statistical reflections on the distribution and formal transformations.

Egyptomania is a specific strategy related to the reception of the heritage of ancient Egypt and incorporation of Egyptian elements into various aspects of modern culture, such as art, crafts, literature, intellectual speculation, and others. This phenomenon manifested itself in architecture, too, especially in the 19th century. We can also point out various Egyptian (or rather, "quasi-Egyptian") motifs and details in the design and construction of some synagogue buildings around the world. In the 1879s, a Polish architect, Stanisław Adamczewski, proposed the idea of a monumental synagogue in Warsaw, incorporating interesting elements reminiscent of ancient Egyptian buildings. He also planned other Egyptian-styled structures in Warsaw, but none of them, like the synagogue itself, were ever constructed.

This article is another link in the chain of my Ancient Near East in Polish Press: 19 th-20 th Century project. The aim and objectives of the research, the geo-historical conditions indicated in the title, and the criteria for the selection of materials are presented in the first part 1. The selected periodical, in this case is the women's weekly magazine, Bluszcz [Ivy]. Initial analysis of this publication indicated potentially more abundant and interesting research material, in addition to the magazine's high-status readership during the 19 th and 20 th Centuries 2. The analysis was preceded by a general, brief presentation of the magazine, omitting several less important side issues, such as detailed publishing and editorial history, profile analyses, programmatic evolution, typography, etc. I limit the discussion to the necessary minimum, referring the reader to separate studies for more extensive information. In accordance with the criteria adopted, I have generally excluded texts relating exclusively to the present (for example, current socio-political issues), limiting the discussed publications to those somehow related to the history of civilisation of the ancient Near East, travel, archaeological research (discoveries, excavation sites, architecture, monuments of material culture), symbolic culture (languages and writings, science, art, beliefs) and contexts (archaeological museum collections, profiles of scholars and travellers, bibliographical notes, discussions of works of fiction alluding to the subject matter and their reviews). The illustrated women's weekly Bluszcz, established by Michał Glücksberg, was issued in Warsaw between 1865 and 1918, the period which will be the subject of our study here, and later: in 1921-1939 and 2008-2012. The profile of the periodical and the journalism gave priority to the program of women's emancipation in the broadest sense 3 , female role models, and ambitious examples to follow. This was presented

This paper discusses two publications and two “pharaohs” (fictitious protagonists) in the historical and Egyptological context of a short story and a novel by Polish writer Aleksander Głowacki (a.k.a. Bolesław Prus). It looks at the observations of a writer fascinated by the dramas of powerful, extraordinary people and visions of a civilization that were firmly embedded in Poland and the whole of Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. The first discussed publication is a short story, A Legend of Old Egypt, on Ramzes (all names given in original spelling provided, either by the author in the case of the short story or the translator in the case of the novel) and his grandson, Horus – the first work in which Prus used “historical costume” to comment on the present and on the human condition. The plot of the masterpiece, Pharaoh, takes place in ancient Egypt and is a story of Ramses XIII’s life. The authors of this paper intend to explore the complexity of Prus’s protagonists aga...

Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), a Japanese painter and woodcutter, was known for his excellent landscape compositions, creating paintings using the European oil technique. He traveled the world and also ex- perimented with traditional woodcut printing. His woodprints depict- ed non-Japanese landscapes and architectural objects, such as ones found in the United States, India, the Swiss Alps, etc. He cultivated the tradition of the ukiyo-e convention, restored in the twentieth century as shin-hanga. The article concerns one of these extraordinary works: the night and day views of the Great Egyptian Sphinx. The woodcut is very precise, and a few of its details allow us to determine the date of the creation of the prototype, as it depicts an important stage in the conservation works carried out on the famous statue. The article also digresses into interesting Japanese-Egyptian themes in the nineteenth century and the works of contemporary Japanese Egyptologists.Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950),...

The article discusses some interesting themes of using the image of the Egyptian sphinx in contemporary contexts: the Egypt Awakened (Nahdat Misr) monument in Cairo, symbolizing modern Egypt, and the use of the sphinx motif as an aspect of social protests; the so-called Arab Spring and the political upheaval in Egypt of 2010–2012.

Badanie meandrów współczesnej recepcji dziedzictwa starożytności kojarzy się zazwyczaj ze spuścizną kultury greckiej i rzymskiej. W bieżącym numerze proponujemy spojrzenie nieco inne – na ciekawe i intrygujące ślady czerpania z dorobku kultur starożytnego Wschodu, przede wszystkim Egiptu. Ten wątek pojawia się w artykułach działu tematycznego niniejszego numeru „Perspektyw Kultury”.

Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), a Japanese painter and woodcutter, was known for his excellent landscape compositions, creating paintings using the European oil technique. He traveled the world and also experimented with traditional woodcut printing. His woodprints depicted non-Japanese landscapes and architectural objects, such as ones found in the United States, India, the Swiss Alps, etc. He cultivated the tradition of the ukiyo-e convention, restored in the twentieth century as shin-hanga. The article concerns one of these extraordinary works: the night and day views of the Great Egyptian Sphinx. The woodcut is very precise, and a few of its details allow us to determine the date of the creation of the prototype, as it depicts an important stage in the conservation works carried out on the famous statue. The article also digresses into interesting Japanese-Egyptian themes in the nineteenth century and the works of contemporary Japanese Egyptologists.

Okładkowy tytuł nowego numeru „Perspektyw Kultury” jest prosty i zara­zem bardzo pojemny, a Autorki i Autorzy udowadniają, że klucz tych trzech słów może odnosić nas do niezwykle interesujących, a nawet nie­kiedy intrygujących obszarów badań.

Francuski filozof Jean-François Lyotard, mimo że był zdeklarowanym postmodernistą, nie zawahał się nazwać fenomenu „mitu środziem­nomorskiego” wielką metanarracją kultury europejskiej. Dziedzictwo antyku grecko-rzymskiego przez stulecia budowało system aksjologiczno­-estetyczny, wzbogacony nowymi treściami – zwłaszcza chrześcijańską etyką, ale przecież także, na przykład, recepcją wielokulturowego Orientu. Spójny, choć zarazem niejednolity „mit”, powracał wielorako, rytmem kontekstów kolejnych epok historycznych. Czy i jak jest aktualny? Czy w gwałtownie globalizującym się świecie współczesnym symbolicznie pojmowane „Morze Śródziemne” pozostaje jeszcze jakimkolwiek punk­tem odniesienia? Wreszcie – przywołując tytuł naszego numeru – postrzegać je możemy jako kulturowo inspirujące „centrum świata” czy już jedy­nie jako peryferie?

Abstrakt: Artykul omawia relacje dziennikarza Maurycego Manna (1814-1876) z jego podrozy po Bliskim Wschodzie, zwlaszcza Egipcie (1852-1853), publikowaną w krakowskim „Czasie"; relacja jest waznym a niedocenianym przyczynkiem do dziejow polskiego reportazu. - Nadb. z: Rocznik Historii Prasy Polskiej, 2009, z. 2, s. 135-146

the impact of ancient egypt on european architecture is usually discussed in a broader, multilayered context. although the phenomenon of „egyptomania” has only recently gained the status of an autonomous scientific field and has become quite popular in the last few decades, several monographs focusing on the architectural aspects of this issue have been published; such as J.-m.Humbert’s, l’ Égyptomanie dans l’art occidental, Paris, 1989; J.s. curl’s, Egyptomania. The Egyptian Revival: a Recurring Theme in the History of Taste, manchester & new york 1994; and Imhotep Today: Egyptianizing architecture, ed.1 by J.-m.Humbert, c.Price, london 2003, unfortunately without any reference to Poland2. in Polish architecture obelisks and pyramids showed up before the nineteenth century. they constituted a common motif in baroque architecture, frequently adorning church facades, were used in a type of tombstone, and formed part of a funeral ceremony called Pompa funebris (an example of which is ...

The article points out a few selected threads of interest related to Karol Wojtyła’s – Pope John Paul II’s – relationship with the ancient world, with the focus on the Biblical lands. Some of his statements on this subject are dis­cussed. Above all, the focus is on John Paul II’s pilgrimages in 2000 and 2001. These two endeavors were connected with the Jubilee Year, in which the Pope visited, among other countries, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Greece, referring to the ancient history of these locations.

Temat tytułowy 27 numeru kwartalnika „Perspektywy Kultury” kieruje zapewne intuicję Czytelnika w stronę refleksji filozoficznej. I tak właśnie jest. Podstawowa definicja słownikowa „tożsamości” wskazuje na synonim tego terminu – „identyczność”, a dalej – fakty, cechy, dane personalne po­zwalające zidentyfikować jakąś osobę. Głębsza, humanistyczno‑społeczna definicja odsyła jednak w obszar samoświadomości, ale i poczucia jed­ności wspólnoty, elementów tę wspólnotę warunkujących. Te elemen­ty to zwłaszcza kultura, wartości, w końcu wspólnotowość postrzegana w wymiarze metafizycznym, wzniosłe ideały moralne i religijne. Dwoje autorów filozofów, Agata Płazińska i Piotr Duchliński z Akademii Igna­tianum, proponują refleksję nad metafizyczno-kulturotwórczym charak­terem ofiary na przykładzie życia i śmierci Edyty Stein i Simone Weil, nad sensem aktu ofiary w imię wyższych wartości. W naszym kręgu kul­turowym taką wartością jest np. oddanie własnego życia za innego czło­wieka. Jest to ofia...

Rok 2018 upłynął pod znakiem rozmaitych, uroczystych celebracji rocz­nicy stulecia naszej niepodległości. Nie można było więc zignorować tego wielkiego wydarzenia również w wymiarze naukowej refleksji, wobec tego postanowiliśmy włączyć w ten i kolejny numer „Perspektyw Kultury” kil­ka interesujących tekstów – kulturoznawczych namysłów nad różnymi aspektami niepodległości. W pierwszym minicyklu trzech artykułów do­minują badania nad wątkami prefiguracji tego, do czego doszło w 1918 r. Włodzimierz Toruń (KUL) analizuje kilka szkiców, czy może raczej lite­rackich rozprawek Cypriana Norwida, napisanych po upadku powstania styczniowego (1864), wyrażających jego krytyczny pogląd na temat pol­skich dróg ku narodowej suwerenności. Polacy „umieją bić się”, ale „nie umieją walczyć” – pisze Norwid – wskazując zarazem na znaczenie nie­podległości duchowej, istotniejszej w jego opinii aniżeli niepodległość ro­zumiana politycznie. Wilhelm Coindre (UKSW) zwraca się ku interesu­jącym motywom niepod...

Niespełna rok po amerykańskiej premierze na polskim rynku księgarskim pojawiła się książka, którą waszyngtońskie instytucje think tanks i prasa, zarówno specjalistyczna (od „Foreign Affairs” po „Kirkus Reviews”), jak codzienna (m.in. „New York Times”), zgodnie nazwały jedną z najlepszych i najważniejszych książek non fiction 2018 r., a wybitni eksperci – pośród nich Francis Fukuyama, gen. Michael Hayden (były dyrektor Narodowej Agencji Bezpieczeństwa USA oraz szef CIA) czy nawet Vinton Gray Cerf, uważany za jednego z wynalazców Internetu, i liczni inni komplementowali słowami najwyższego uznania. Oryginalny tytuł, brzmiący w języku angielskim bardzo celnie, a zarazem przewrotnie – LikeWar – co rozumieć można jednocześnie jako „wojnę lajków” i „nibywojnę”, przetłumaczony został bodaj nieco banalnie i mniej marketingowo: Nowy rodzaj wojny, dopiero druga jego część, podobnie do anglojęzycznej, doprecyzowuje, że chodzi o Media społecznościowe jako broń. W istocie jednak tytułowe sformuł...

Tygodnik ilustrowany "Wędrowiec" (1863–1906) zgodnie z tytułem i deklaracją programową poświęcał na swoich łamach wiele miejsca geografii, dziejom kultury, opisom obcych krajów i relacjom podróżniczym. Artykuł omawia publikowane w tym czasopiśmie teksty odnoszące się do zagadnień starożytnego Bliskiego Wschodu.

Czasopisma naukowe kręgu tzw. prasy warszawskiej: "Biblioteka Warszawska" (1841–1914) i "Ateneum" (1876–1901) poświęcały na swoich łamach wiele miejsca zagadnieniom postępów nauki, dziejom kultury i opisom krajów. Artykuł omawia publikowane w tych czasopismach teksty odnoszące się do zagadnień starożytnego Bliskiego Wschodu.

The development of Egyptology in the 19th century, the archaeological research in Egypt (but also in university workshops or museums) were the subject of attention not only of the scientific press, but more often they started to be noticed and commented on – also in Poland in the literary papers popularizing general knowledge, even newspapers. From Cairo there were sent the plentiful correspondence, more or less extensive descriptions of interesting places or events, information about the research proceedings which referred to different aspects of Egyptology. A rise of scientific knowledge about ancient Egypt has been changing the character of literary or paraliterary statements in connection to this subject. We can even observe the specific evolution in the ways of its construction. Before, the concepts related to the concept of ancient Egypt remained in the area of ‘unknown, secret symbols’, ‘immemorial riddle’; with the development of diligent knowledge ‘secrets’ managed to be re...

This paper brings to light the reports and analyses written by Tadeusz Smoleński, a forgotten source on the political history of the Middle East and particularly Egypt, in the first decade of the 20th century. Tadeusz Smoleński (1884–1909), the first Polish Egyptologist, was also a regular correspondent of the Lviv daily newspaper Słowo Polskie [‘The Polish Word’]. In his reports, he outlines a panoramic view of Egypt’s extraordinarily complex political situa­tion, determined by tensions between the European powers, i.e., the rivalry between Britain and France, and between Russia and Germany. Another fac­tor whose growing importance was noted by the Polish observer, is the rise of nationalist and Islamist movements in both Egypt and the Arab world as a whole. This takes place alongside the chronic political instability of the Otto­man Empire. While acknowledging all of the beneficial aspects of British rule (especially under the consulship of Sir Evelyn Baring), Smoleński does not h...

Polish scholarly magazines Biblioteka Warszawska [Warsaw Library] (1841–1914) and Ateneum (1876–1901) devoted a quite a lot of attention to recent discoveries in the field of ancient history, cultural history and descriptions of foreign countries. This article discusses materials on the ancient Middle East published in both of these periodicals.

The illustrated weekly "Wędrowiec" (The Wanderer), published in 1863–1906, certainly lived up to its programmatic title and published a great deal of material on geography, history of culture and travels abroad. This article discusses the texts that dealt with the ancient history of the Middle East.

The paper: An Unusual Collection of Nicholas Christopher Radziwiłł “the Orphan” discusses the trip to Egypt, which Radziwiłł undertook during the pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1582-1584. Radziwiłł visited and described in his relation the pyramids in Gizeh and the ancient necropolis of Saqqarah, where he bought two mummies and collected a number of artifacts, with which he planned to enrich the collection of the family castle in Nesvizh. The collection was most likely lost on his return journey home.

Venice on the Route of the Pilgrimage of Mikołaj Krzysztof “the Orphan” Radziwiłł to Egypt and the Holy Land: The paper discusses the Venice stage of the journey of the Polish-Lithuanian nobleman Nicholas Christopher Radziwill, nicknamed “the Orphan,” to the Holy Land, Syria and Egypt (1582-1584). The question posed by the paper is why this part of the pilgrimage was downplayed, in contrast to the lavish descriptions of the diary under the title Hierosolymitana Peregrinatio [‘A Jerusalem Trip’].

Jean-André Périchon’s Collection of Egyptian Antiquities in The Museum of Fine Arts, Limoges.

The article presents the fi gure of Jean-André Périchon (1860–1929), a French engineer and director of the sugar factory in Rodah, who spent part of his life in Egypt. Lover and collector of ancient Egyptian art, who assembled a large collection of various items and passed on to The Museum of Fine Arts, Limoges. The most interesting objects are so-called “models” and “scenes” of Egyptian daily life.

Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), a Japanese painter and woodcutter, was known for his excellent landscape compositions, creating paintings using the European oil technique. He traveled the world and also experimented with traditional woodcut printing. His woodprints depicted non-Japanese landscapes and architectural objects, such as ones found in the United States, India, the Swiss Alps, etc. He cultivated the tradition of the ukiyo-e convention, restored in the twentieth century as shin-hanga. The article concerns one of these extraordinary works: the night and day views of the Great Egyptian Sphinx. The woodcut is very precise, and a few of its details allow us to determine the date of the creation of the prototype, as it depicts an important stage in the conservation works carried out on the famous statue. The article also digresses into interesting Japanese-Egyptian themes in the nineteenth century and the works of contemporary Japanese Egyptologists.

ANTONI MUCHLIŃSKI (1808-1877): REFLECTIONS OF AN ORIENTALIST ON THE SITUATION OF THE COPTIC CHURCH IN THE FIRST DECADES OF THE 19TH CENTURY.
The subject of this brief study is furnished by some remarks relating to the person, and one of the works, of a Polish orientalist who travelled to Egypt in the years 1834–1835 and who, in 1858, published a short report describing the traditions and contemporary realities of the Coptic community in the north-eastern part of the Nile delta, near modern San al-Hagar (ancient Tanis).

At the end of the 18th century, Egypt was a province of the Ottoman Empire mired in a permanent crisis. One can even say that the rapid progress of civilization and technology in Europe, gathering speed at the time, was almost a mirror opposite of the regress in the contemporary East. At the same time, the “myth of the Orient” was clearly growing in the West, touching the hearts and minds of humanists, arousing curiosity, imagination and fantasy. The numbers of increasingly popular travel reports, novels, poems and opera librettos centered on Oriental or pseudo-Oriental motifs were growing. Naturally – the Orient was also an area of magnificent ruins;  impressive, yet extremely mysterious remains of ancient civilizations, the distant echo of which could still be heard in many corners of the European spirit. From the early Middle Ages, this heritage was embedded in the Arabian, Muslim context; civilizations completely alien to each other were usually seen by Europeans as inseparable, as a paradoxical unity. Actual tension was growing at the same time in politics, demanding – on both sides – the wording of some concept of mutual relations in the forthcoming decades. Rulers and politicians of the Muslim world were asking themselves the question of how to overcome this blissful, but increasingly severe paralysis, how heavily to support themselves on their own tradition during the potential transformation, how to look for a non-confrontational rapprochement with the West – or how to effectively maintain distance – in order toboth profit and not cause an abrupt, ruthless expansion of European powers, who, under the appearance of “enlightened assistance” and “civilizing mission”, would simply carry out brutal colonization. In the late 18th century, poverty and the functional inertia of Egypt, which, despite its formal subordination to Istanbul, was still enjoying an aspect of individuality (the reign of the Mamluks), were compounded due to several successive low Nile floods and epidemics. At the same time on the Seine, an idea finally matured, previously presented to Louis XIV by the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz one hundred years earlier, and now reinforced by arguments of “wrongs” done to the sensitive section of the Indian trail and the French merchants. Also, the Parisian intellectuals were deliberating and legitimizing potential intervention by the ideas of the Enlightenment and a simplistic label of “Oriental despotism”, forcing even the French to act out a “civilizing mission of liberation”. Bonaparte was additionally led by yet another ambition: he saw himself as a new Alexander, marching victoriously with his army “to the East”. The short period of Napoleonic invasion and confrontation, which involved a power struggle between France, Britain and Turkey, only superficially stabilized Egypt under the rule of Muhammad Ali, the founder of the dynasty that would rule the country uninterrupted until 1952. He himself, having reigned for more than four decades, changed the face of the country and the region. His death almost exactly in the middle of the 19th century left a very different Egypt to his successors, Europe and the world.
The breakthrough in the nineteenth-century history of Egypt “circa 1850”; the death of Muhammad Ali and the reign of his successors (with varying degrees of success) makes one stop to reflect on the middle of that century. Edward Said also suggests namely the year 1850 as the date of the closure of a significant formational phase, as well as of formulation, from the Western perspective, of a basic (“full”) resource, a body of Orientalist knowledge: geographical discoveries, descriptions, scientific treatises, museum collections (in one word – paradigm), applied in principle to the present day. Around the “circa 1850”, a number of intriguing events took place in Egypt. Politics and economy, despite the obvious context, however, are only a background for the discussion of issues connected with the variously understood “reception of Egypt”, and its transgressive re-evaluations in this book. It is a journey into the valley of the Nile – literal, or completely metaphorical (invariably seen as a simultaneous expedition into the abyss of time), collecting artifacts, and finally the phenomenon of so-called Egyptomania – the attempts to interpret, transfer, and explore the surprising presence of the various elements of material and spiritual heritage of the pharaohs in the modern culture of the West.
The book focuses on several individuals and several events exemplifying the uniqueness, and the breakthrough character of the time. Firstly – Muhammad Ali and Rifa’a at-Tahtawi: the ruler, and the Muslim theologian who was appointed the mission of “understanding” the West, particularly discovering the secret of its economic and military superiority. Tahtawi, however, saw his job differently, more widely, perhaps even (one might say – more and more widely as years went by) contrary to the recommendations of Ali: he tried to bridge the intellectual gaps between East and West, to understand, even for – and in the name of – all Egyptians, “who they were,” what they should aim for, what their identity and heritage of the past was. Two romantic travelers arriving from countries that had been so fiercely at war for Egypt fifty years before: the Frenchman Gustave Flaubert, fascinated with the Orient since his childhood, who sought in Egypt a confirmation of his exuberant imagination, and the cool, but also extremely sensitive British woman – Florence Nightingale, whose enthusiasm and fascination with Egypt were born and grew only during her unhurried travel on the Nile. They traveled in exactly the same year – 1850 – although we shall probably never know if they ever met. This “couple” is complemented by the Polish journalist who came to the Nile, Maurycy Mann, who – as he wrote – wanted to “catch the last breath and the color of the old East.” Mid-nineteenth century Egypt is also seen through the eyes of a young Polish painter Franciszek Tepa, and photographed by one of the pioneers of the then new art of image capture, Maxime Du Camp (the first of whom was otherwise Mann’s traveling companion, the second one – Flaubert’s). Finally, two majestic figures of Egyptologists: the dignified, old-fashioned historian and Prussian professor from Berlin – Karl Richard Lepsius; and the Frenchman Auguste Mariette, who set foot on Egyptian sands in 1850 and changed, or at least tried to change, almost everything that previously made up the idea and practice of what discovering the archaeological heritage of the pharaohs was to Europeans.
The key consideration is the theme of transgression: conscious and active, or on the contrary – as involuntary crossing of borders, breaking and sustainably transforming structures, including one’s own thinking and perception. The motif of successful and unsuccessful attempts to satisfy the boundless curiosity and, consequently, stubborn, yet not always conscious, striving for the most varied transgressions. Individuals, but also entire communities are transformed, exceeding physical, social, intellectual (cognitive), moral and symbolic limits, creating new values, which sometimes even form a new paradigm of existence and cultural system. Sometimes, the transgression is a single event, another time a process or a sequence of events. Intriguing is not only the transgression, the transgressive act, but – perhaps even more so – what the researchers call borderline situations; circumstances that condition the transgressions. This could be, what is most obvious (and literal), journeys, travel experience, individual and collective ambitions, fantasy, curiosity, cognitive dissonance, and even the sense of alienation and loneliness. Transgression in this sense is, in other words, creative thinking and action, set to change. The change may concern – or it usually concerns – areas which have hitherto been regarded as immutable, as permanent structures, as stable constructs (even ones stable in their permanent instability). Often, the manner and direction of change is unexpected, or at least for the most part it is not the same as one can think of and plan; the transgression itself happens to be an innovative one, but also in some cases – paradoxically – a conservative one. Mircea Eliade had no doubt that our understanding of the East will always be marked by a completely different paradigm of forms and structures, epistemological categories impassable for us. Attempts to get to know and understand each other (we may add here, ones for a long time mostly one-way attempts) of the East and West are an extremely broad, multi-threaded, and multi-faceted issue, and at the same time undertaken in research so many times that without geographical and chronological clarification they lead to monumental, multi-disciplinary syntheses. However, it seems that the title “Egypt circa 1850” deserves separate and special scholarly attention.
An annex to the book is a scientific edition of the Letters of the Journey to the East by a Polish aristocrat, Karol Drzewiecki, who stayed in Egypt in 1848. His narratives are also an excellent example of a characteristic transformation of the literary description of an Oriental journey formula. We find therein both “erudite” motifs (interestingly referring to the state of the then rapidly expanding Egyptology), romantic determinants of a “nostalgic voyage”, and finally, already distinguishing patterns of conventionalization, the product of which would become the mass, trivial “productions” of tourist literature in the second half of the 19th century.

The Sphinx, a hybrid creature born in the mythical imagination of ancient peoples, has outlived the structures of civilizations that co-created it. As an idea, a symbol, an image, it has accompanied us until the present times, having mutated, undergone misinterpretations, acquired numerous iconographic and symbolic misunderstandings and purposeful deformations. This book is a historico-cultural monograph, and its protagonist has been shown therein – as represented by the collected examples of its manifestations – as a vessel of clear, dramatic, and at the same time dynamic, set of symbols which is an axis of various cultural narrations evolved in correspondence with different meanders of social and political history, the history of doctrine, mental transformations, esthetic changes and even changing fashions and tastes of different historical eras.
The problem of transformations of its symbolic meaning (enrichment and weakening) is both challenging and complex. It is a carrier of symbolism, and at the same time one of universal and detailed content transcending time, inadvertently non-identical in different historical periods. We are not always entitled to certify the “correctness” or “non-correctness” of the symbol’s interpretation.
The Sphinx is not only a “mystery” in the most wide understanding, or even in its trivialized quasi-mysteriousness, but also a guardian of this mystery, of its sacrum, an apotropaion, an esoteric figure, an initiator, “silence”, confession. It is, further, a peculiarity, an exotism, ambivalence and a unified oneness; an ancient, forgotten wisdom, memory, tradition, history, sempiternal existence, and at the same time, the inescapable transience of time, death and afterlife, horror, fear, suffering, emptiness and melancholy. The Sphinx is seen as an allegory of Egypt itself (the civilization of the pharaohs and modern Egypt as well) and – generally speaking – of Africa as a continent (today especially in tourist categories, formerly in the context of colonial conquest), but also an allegory of the entire ancient world. The Sphinx was seen as a personalization of mythology, religion (and sacrum as such), and also of Paganism, magic, art, knowledge (but sometimes also ignorance), science, majesty and power. The Sphinx is a so-called implicit symbol, as its representations (e.g., in visual arts) can be interpreted both symbolically and realistically. Relating the symbolical interpretations of the Sphinx to the perverse, insidious, sometimes cruel and always impenetrable essence of femininity, eroticism, the female-male relationship, authenticity and dualism, is a modernist legacy.
The aspect of its manifestation as a symbol, and especially the transformed representations of the iconographic Sphinx (predominantly the Egyptian or pseudo-Egyptian one) seems to be the most inspiring one within the imaginary - symbolic universe of modern culture, including popular culture. Here, the area of inquiry is permanently open.
The first part of the book is preceded by an insight into the history of research on the Sphinx. It is a kind of a guide to the sources of the subject matter; the beginning of the hybrid symbolism, the ancient genealogy of the Sphinx, its mythological and iconographic matrix and intercultural contexts in ancient Egypt (with an extensive digression on the Great Sphinx of Giza), Mesopotamia and Levantine cultures; followed by the transfer of the Sphinx phenomenon and at the same time its multifaceted evolutions and transformations into the Greek and Roman world (with the theme of Oedipus’ riddle). This historical review is obviously necessary to indicate the possible cond tions whose consequences (intended or unintended), or even superseded, will be later reception meanders, revocations, interpretations (and reinterpretations) and symbolical-allegorical misinterpretations, and at the same time transformations, adaptations and modern inventions (e.g., iconographic ones).
The final link is the discussion of the Sphinx symbol and imagery in late Graeco-Roman era, the complex history of medieval hybrid imagery (bestiaria) and transformations of the reception of the Sphinx symbolism and imagery from the 15th to 18th century. I have devoted a little more room to the Sphinx in the polyhistorical concepts of Athanasius Kircher, in freemasonry speculations and I discuss travel accounts of the Great Sphinx of Giza in travel literature.
At the end of the 18th century, the Sphinx reception (which is not identical to its very presence in iconography, predominantly utilitarian than purely artistic), or, to put it generally, the Sphinx imagery, drifts around what we could call the “semiotic zero“. The trivial fields of exploitation, the context gap, pure, almost non-reflective decorativeness, poverty and triviality of pseudo-symbolic associations.
The chronological starting point of the second part of the book is the early 19th century, for a few reasons. First and foremost, the Sphinx motif was then incorporated into the monumental historiosophical and aesthetic considerations (art symbolism) of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the aftermath of the military and scientific campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt resulted in an unusual intensification of the interest in Egypt and the legacy of the pharaohs, reflected in serious science and popular reception (the so-called Egyptomania). Such diverse and multi-value dissemination of the Sphinx theme was, at the same time, a spectacular increase in the presence of the image, motif and symbol of the Sphinx. Some scholars – such as Jean-Marcel Humbert – even claim that there is a separate, specific aspect of the early 19th century fascination with Egypt: “Sphinxomania”. The Sphinx and its symbolic interpretations appear particularly often and in many intriguing ways.
Since the 19th century literature until now, from Goethe’s Faust, through O. Wilde, J. Słowacki, M. Twain, H. Sienkiewicz, E. Schuré, H.G. Wells, to S. de Beauvoir), painting and illustration, utilitarian graphics and caricature – from Ingres, Moreau, Vedder, Gérôme and W. Kossak, von Stück, Rops, Böcklin, Styka, Toorop to Kupka, Bilk, Fini, Ernst, Dali and others), crafts and political metaphor, philosophical reflection and pseudo-philosophical esoteric to the variously articulated common reception, the Sphinx has been expoited in many intriguing ways. In the late 19th century Friedrich Nietzsche notes a distinct phenomenon of ungrounded overexploitation, or even dazzling with the symbolism and metaphor of the Sphinx, or the name itself, which he promptly referred to as umsphinxt.
A separate summary, although still open, is a reflection on the presence of the Sphinx motif and symbol in times close to our present day. The Sphinx is incorporated surprisingly easily into the framework of Postmodernism, which grounded its identity on the basis of excluding tradition, or, generally speaking, “all that is old”, to replace it with a new system of values (especially ethical and aesthetic), simultaneously proposing a kind of “pan-eclecticism” and “pan-syncretism”, rehabilitating practically all, even, contradictory traditions, creating an original value of paradox compilation, quotation, repetition, taken in the quotation marks of irony or distance, placing well known motifs in surprising, sometimes irritating or shocking contexts, purposefully anti-aesthetic, absurd, sometimes demolishing values and hierarchies. The Sphinx finds its place in the program of popular culture, offering something that in the system of its values (pseudo-values or anti-values) is the most attractive: an intriguing, attention-drawing decorative “weirdness” (which allows it to function in the panopticum of “popular gadgets”), ambivalence (thus a type of “universal symbolism”, which gives it a place in commercial narrations etc.), connected with a practically global recognizability, which, at least usually, is enough for the popular, stereotypical reception (for example, I have discussed contemporary “pop-carnations” of the Sphinx), but also inspires original, creative inventions, such as Kara Walker’s and Banksy’s.