Introduction

Karen Ascani, Paola Buzi and Daniela Picchi

History can be ungenerous towards those who are involved in writing it. Such has been the destiny of Georg Zoëga, a distinguished Egyptologist, Coptologist, Archaeologist, and Numismatist, whose scientific and cultural contributions— highly valued by his contemporaries—fell almost entirely into oblivion with the end of the Enlightenment. Born in Denmark from a family of Venetian origin, Georg Zoëga had firm cultural roots both in his native country and in Italy, where he lived from 1783 until his death in 1809. Rome and the scholarly circle under the patronage of Cardinal Stefano Borgia became Zoëga’s home, where he welcomed many international scholars, ‘celebrities’, and dear friends, such as Goethe, Heyne, Dolomieu, Münter, Thorvaldsen. In 1769 Stefano Borgia,1 who was born in Velletri (Rome) in 1731 and died in Lyons in 1804, began to set up a collection, containing precious objects and curiosities from all over the world. The Museo Borgiano, on display at the Borgia Palace of Velletri, became one of the must-see destinations of the Italian Grand Tour, visited by scholars and other interested, mostly foreign, travellers, on their way from Rome to Naples. It was one of the most famous encyclopaedic museums in Italy, relevant also at European level, the only eighteenth-century residence-museum in Europe boasting Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Pre-Latin, Roman, Arabic and Indian texts and artefacts, besides Medieval paintings and liturgical objects, maps, and the like that the Catholic missionaries would send to Borgia, as Secretary (and later Prefect) of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. In particular, the Cardinal reserved a special predilection for ancient Egypt, to the point of creating the richest Egyptian collection in Europe before the Napoleonic expedition.

1 The bibliography dedicated to Cardinal Borgia is extremely large. See, in particular, H. Enzensberger, Borgia, Stefano, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, (Roma: Treccani, 1970), 739–742 and Paolino da San Bartolomeo, Vitae Synopsis Steph. Borgiae S.R.E. Cardinalis Amplissimi, S. Congr. de Propaganda Fide Praefecti Curante P. Paulino a S. Bartholomaeo Carmelita Disclaceato, (Romae: apud Antonium Fulgonium, 1805). Paolino da San Bartolomeo, a Carmelite monk of Austrian origin and an expert in oriental languages, thanks to his close friendship with the Cardinal, gave a very effective description of his personality and his scientific interests.

At the request of the Cardinal, Zoëga dedicated himself to rearranging the Alexandrinian coins of the Museo Borgiano and published the relative catalogue, Numi Aegyptii imperatorii prostantes in museo Borgiano Velitris, in 1787. In the meantime, inspired by such a stimulating environment, he passionately studied the hundreds of Egyptian antiquities collected by his benefactor and prepared the Catalogo dei monumenti egiziani nel Museo Borgiano composto ed ordinato dal Sig. Giorgio Zoega dotto Danese nel mese di Ottobre del 1784, which remained unpublished. This catalogue is fundamental to an in-depth knowl- edge of the Borgia collection and of Zoëga’s methodological approach to the study of Egyptian material culture. Moreover, being also a brilliant philologist, he was charged by Pope Pius vi to write a dissertation focused on Roman obelisks, the meaning of whose inscriptions was, at the time, completely unknown. By transcribing and comparing the inscriptions on obelisks to those he found in the collections he had the opportunity to visit, Zoëga contributed to the decipherment of hieroglyphs and, in particular, identified some of their writing rules before J.-F. Champollion did. He was equally devoted to the study of the Coptic language and litera- ture, and was considered a major scholar in this field due to his monumental Catalogus codicum copticorum manu scriptorum qui in Museo Borgiano Velitris adservantur, a detailed literary, codicological, and palaeographical description of the Borgia Coptic manuscripts, on parchment leaves now preserved in part in the National Library of Naples and in part in the Apostolic Vatican Library. After Borgia’s death, Zoëga had to defend his copyright when the first edition of the catalogue was published in 1805, but the de Propaganda Fide Congregation and the Borgia heirs opposed him strongly. He did not live to see the new and more complete version of the catalogue, which was published posthumously in 1810.

Hundreds of letters, drawings, sketches, notes, and other documents, mainly preserved in The Royal Library and Thorvaldsens Museum of Copenhagen, represent Zoëga’s scholarly bequest, which is almost entirely unknown2 and often richer of insights than his printed volumes.

2 The interests of the three editors of this volume and their publications focused on Zoëga’s manuscripts were the first starting point for the project “The Forgotten Scholar: Georg Zoëga (1755–1809)”. Cf. P. Buzi, Catalogo dei manoscritti copti Borgiani conservati presso la Biblioteca Nazionale “Vittorio Emanuele iii” di Napoli. Con un profilo scientifico di Stefano Borgia e Georg Zoega e una breve storia della formazione della collezione Borgiana, (Roma: Scienze e Lettere, 2009); D. Picchi, Alle origini dell’Egittologia: le antichità egiziane di Bologna e Venezia da un inedito di Georg Zoëga, (Imola: La Mandragora, 2010); Ø. Andreasen, K. Ascani