In his On the Art of Building, Renaissance humanist Leon Battista Alberti wrote that the ancient Egyptians believed that alphabetical languages would one day all be lost, but the pictorial method of writing they used could be understood easily by intellectuals everywhere and far into the future. Amidst a renewed appreciation of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics found on obelisks in Italy and the discovery of Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, which purported to translate the language, Renaissance humanists like Alberti developed an obsession with this ancient form of non-alphabetical writing. Additionally, a growing awareness of the lost language of their Etruscan ancestors further ignited an anxiety among Italian humanists that their own ideas might one day become unintelligible. As Egyptomania spread through the Italian peninsula, some saw an answer to their fears in the pictorial hieroglyphics of the ancient Egyptians, for they perceived, in Egyptian writing, the potential for a universal language. Thus, many created Renaissance hieroglyphs based on those of the Egyptians. This essay examines the successes and failures of these neo-hieroglyphs, which early modern humanists and artists created hoping that a language divorced from alphabetical text might better convey the memory of their names and contributions to posterity.

中文翻译：

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在文艺复兴时期的象形文字中复兴古埃及：人文主义对不朽的渴望


文艺复兴时期的人文主义者莱昂·巴蒂斯塔·阿尔贝蒂在他的《建筑艺术》中写道，古埃及人相信字母语言有一天会全部消失，但他们使用的图形书写方法可以被世界各地和遥远的未来的知识分子轻松理解。随着对意大利方尖碑上发现的古埃及象形文字的重新认识以及霍拉波罗旨在翻译该语言的象形文字的发现，像阿尔贝蒂这样的文艺复兴时期的人文主义者对这种古老的非字母书写形式产生了痴迷。此外，人们越来越意识到伊特鲁里亚祖先失落的语言，这进一步引发了意大利人文主义者的焦虑，他们担心自己的想法有一天可能会变得难以理解。随着埃及狂热在意大利半岛蔓延，一些人在古埃及的象形文字中看到了他们恐惧的答案，因为他们在埃及文字中看到了建立通用语言的潜力。因此，许多人根据埃及象形文字创造了文艺复兴时期的象形文字。本文探讨了这些新象形文字的成功和失败，这些新象形文字是早期现代人文主义者和艺术家创造的，希望一种脱离字母文本的语言可以更好地传达他们的名字的记忆和对后代的贡献。