Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability That the Language of the Empire of China is the Primitive Language.

£1,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

John Webb (1611-1672) was a notable English architect who had studied under Inigo Jones. Having a strong interest in historical studies and in China, he argued that Chinese was the original language of mankind before Babel, and attempted to link Chinese to the Biblical concept of a universal ancient language. He saw parallels between Chinese characters and Egyptian hieroglyphs and having little knowledge of Chinese he drew on Jesuit sources (incl. Athanasius Kircher) in support of his theories. This copy belonged to the Anglo-Irish Viscount John Molesworth (1679-1726), the second Viscount Molesworth, who spent much of his life in Italy, working as a British diplomat in Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Turin.

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