A decorative typographical header block composed of repeating floral and fleur-de-lis motifs in a rectangular arrangement.

THE EGYPTIAN OEDIPUS

OR THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER Volume III.

PREFACE TO THE MOST WISE FERDINAND III, ROMAN EMPEROR, JUST, PIOUS, AND BLESSED.

We finally reveal, Most Sacred Caesar, the polymorphous meaning many-shaped kingdom of Hieroglyphic Morpheus The god of dreams and shapes, here used to represent the shifting forms of symbols; a Theater, I say, filled with an immense variety of monsters; I do not mean bare monsters of nature, but those adorned with the enigmatic Chimeras of ancient wisdom, such that I trust sagacious minds may dig out from them immense treasures of the sciences, not without benefit to literature. Here the Dog of Bubastis original: "Bubasticus Canis"; a reference to the jackal-headed god Anubis, the Lion of Sais, the Goat of the Mendesians, and the Crocodile, formidable with the foul gaping of its jaws, reveal the hidden senses of divinity, nature, and souls, which the ancient Sages tucked away under the shadowy mockery of images. Here thirsty Dipsades serpents whose bite was thought to cause intense thirst, virulent Aspics, clever Ichneumons a type of mongoose believed by ancients to be the enemy of the crocodile, cruel Hippopotami, monstrous Dragons, the pot-bellied toad, the coiled snail shell, and the hairy caterpillar—countless ghosts—exhibit a wondrous series and order in the sanctuaries of nature.

Here occur a thousand species of things transformed by a certain exotic metamorphosis, where human figures are converted into various other images and joined back to themselves in a mutual bond; where wildness meets humanity, and humanity meets an affected divinity; and where divinity itself, to speak with Porphyry A 3rd-century Neoplatonist philosopher, passing through the species of all things, seems to have meditated a monstrous marriage with all. Where now, sublime with a variegated face, one here bears a Cynocephalus original: "Cynocephalum"; a dog-headed baboon raising its canine neck; another, dressed in the beaked mask of the foul Ibis or the Hawk, acts out the bird of Great Jove; yet another, charming with a maiden's face in the cloak of a Beetle, counterfeits with the sting original: "acu-", likely "aculeum" or sting, completed on the next page—