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.
The Kircherian Museum in 1679
Filippo Bonanni, Musaeum Kircherianum, 1709
Print from Aes grave del Museo Kircheriano depicting Roman coins
Athanasius Kircher 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. A resurgence of interest in Kircher has occurred within the scholarly community in recent decades.
Portrait from Mundus Subterraneus (1664)
The Coptic alphabet, from Prodromus Coptus sive aegyptiacus.
Athanasius Kircher, Prodromus Coptus Sive Aegyptiacus, Rome 1636
Frontispiece to Kircher's Oedipus Ægyptiacus; the Sphinx, confronted by Kircher's learning, admits he has solved her riddle.
