The Kircherian Museum was a public collection of antiquities and artifacts, a cabinet of curiosities, founded in 1651 by the Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher in the Roman College. Considered the first museum in the world, its collections were gradually dispersed over the centuries under different curatorships. After the Unification of Italy, the museum was dissolved in 1916 and its collection was granted to various other Roman and regional museums.
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👉 Kircherian Museum in the context of Athanasius Kircher
Athanasius Kircher SJ (2 May 1601/1602 – 27 November 1680) was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Joseph Boscovich and to Leonardo da Vinci for his vast range of interests, and has been honoured with the title "Master of a Hundred Arts". He taught for more than 40 years at the Roman College, where he set up a wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities that would become the Kircherian Museum. A resurgence of interest in Kircher has occurred within the scholarly community in recent decades.
Kircher claimed to have deciphered the hieroglyphic writing of the ancient Egyptian language, but most of his assumptions and translations in the field turned out to be wrong. He did, however, correctly establish the link between the ancient Egyptian and the Coptic languages, and some commentators regard him as the founder of Egyptology. Kircher was also fascinated with Sinology and wrote an encyclopedia of China, where he revealed the early presence of Nestorian Christians while also attempting to establish links with Egypt and Christianity.