Ammon and the Hermetic Ram

This black-and-white engraving depicts a scene of Egyptian theological allegory set in a natural landscape with a prominent tree. On the left, a stone herm—a pillar-like statue of the god Ammon—features a bearded head topped with twisted ram's horns and a stylized miter; his body is wrapped in cloth marked with horizontal lines. To the right, a bearded male figure, dressed in a shaggy animal pelt, extends his hand toward a circular, convex disc resting on a rocky mound. Beneath the disc, a shaggy, long-horned ram stands on a low, six-sided stone block. A column of text labeled with alphabetical keys A through H runs along the right margin, providing a legendary for the features of the figures and the objects they interact with.

This plate appears in Athanasius Kircher’s 'Oedipus Aegyptiacus', a massive encyclopedic work that attempted to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs as the source of all ancient wisdom. Kircher’s synthesis of Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and syncretic theology treats Egyptian deities as precursors to Christian revelation, placing this image within the context of early modern comparative mythology and the fascination with prisca theologia.