Miscellaneous Works Of Mr John Greaves Professor Of Astronomy In The University Of Oxford Many Of Which Are Now First Published

This is a modern-spelling edition of John Greaves’s Pyramidographia (1646), together with some miscellaneous travel-writings, letters and a biography of Greaves by Thomas Birch. It includes a full scholarly introduction and detailed notes. This book is the first of its kind in English, and undertakes a scientific evaluation of the pyramids through metrics, using state-of-the-art instruments and drawing on both ancient and modern authorities, amongst which is included Arab and Persian writers as well as Western sources. Greaves’s work is distinguished from others by his refusal to be drawn into mystical or theological speculation, and is an excellent example of how seventeenth-century scientists may be said to have pioneered modern methods of scientific inquiry. Greaves discusses the age of the pyramids, their purpose, the nature of their builders and the methods he believes were used to erect them. It may be said that he is probably the earliest genuine English “Egyptologist”, and that Pyramidographia is indeed the earliest scientific treatise on the subject. Greaves’s travel-writings, which also contain a great deal of measurement, show readers how he approached his sojourn in foreign lands, and his letters give some measure of the man and his relationships with fellow-scientists and patrons. The biography by Thomas Birch further fills out Greaves’s life and career.

This volume comprises a varied collection of seventeen papers presented at the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) held in York in July 2019, which together will provide the reader with a fascinating introduction to travel in and to the Middle East over more than a thousand years.

"The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England" deals with the remarkably widespread interest in Arabic in seventeenth-century England among Biblical scholars and theologians, natural philosophers and Fellows of the Royal Society, and others. It led to the institutionalisation of Arabic studies at Oxford and Cambridge Universities where Arabic chairs were set up, and immense manuscript collections were established and utilised. Fourteen historians examine the extent and sources of this Arabic interest in areas ranging from religion, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, philology, and alchemy to botany. Arabic is shown to have been a significant component of the rise of Protestant intellectual tradition and the evolution of secular scholarship at universities.