Athanasius Kircher’s catalogue of the prodigious early museum (a Wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities) which he assembled and arranged at the Roman College of the Society of Jesus was
completed by his assistant Giorgio de Sepi for publication in 1678. This publication, with many expertly-engraved illustrations, is one of the most sumptuous and most curious examples of high
baroque book production. It has memorable images of exotic birds and animals, of one of the first magic-lanterns or projected images, its text hints at the presence of machines which are little
short of computers, it also illustrates numerous wonderful machines, be those clockwork automata, chiming and ambulant clocks, or multiplying and distorting mirrors. It is perhaps most famous
for the exceptionally lavish fold-out plates of Roman obelisks which it contains, each page dedicated to one of the obelisks re-discovered in baroque Rome or new obelisks with
pseudo-hierolgyphics by Kircher, devised according to his own scheme of interpretation of hieroglyphics as pictograms or, in baroque practice, emblems or impresa.A full facsimile, including
foldout plates, is offered here, together with the first English translation of a notoriously problematic Latin text. There is also a commentary to the translation, identifying objects, sources
and facts while also explaining something of the status which the museum and its description share, as epitomes of the scarcely-credible range of activities and disciplines in which Kircher
involved himself. The commentary also identifies passages which refer to others of Kircher’s numerous and prodigious works. The edition also contains an afterword, reflecting on the current
state of scholarship on Kircher, his museum, and his world. At last a text which has often been mentioned in studies of baroque Rome, of museums in early-modern Italy, of intellectual networks
in 17th-century Europe, is available to the English-speaking reader in a lavish edition which preserves and enhances the splendor of the original production.
