Karl Otfried Müller's kleine deutsche Schriften über Religion, Kunst, Sprache und Literatur, Leben und Geschichte des Alterthums gesammelt und herausgegeben von Eduard Müller. Erster Band Nebst Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Verfassers [...]

Full title: Karl Otfried Müller's kleine deutsche Schriften über Religion, Kunst, Sprache und Literatur, Leben und Geschichte des Alterthums gesammelt und herausgegeben von Eduard Müller. Erster Band Nebst Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Verfassers. Mit einer Karte.

First of 2 volumes in 8vo. pp. lxxxvii, 550, f. 1. Plate inside front cover: “Bibl. Rhetorum Prov. Germ.,” stamp on front flyleaf: “Biblioth. Rhetor. S.J. Provinc. Germ.” This volume includes, on pp. 445-452, Müller’s half-admiring exposure of Wagenfeld’s 1837 pretended Phoenician’s history (Sanchuniathonis historiarum Phoeniciae, see Bib# 1970352/Fr# 1426).

The 25-year-old precocious philologist and folklorist Friedrich Wagenfeld (1810-1846) invented large sections – in Greek – of the lost text of Sanchuniathon’s Phoenician history, a work hitherto known only from fragments (like Petronius before Poggio, or Cicero’s Consolatio before Carlo Sigonio). His initial summary publication, from a manuscript supposedly found in a Portuguese monastery, was Sanchuniathon’s Urgeschichte der Phönizier (Hannover, 1836, see Bib# 4103037/Fr# 1424 in this collection), which appeared with an enthusiastic and unquestioning preface by the learned orientalist Georg Friedrich Grotefend; this was followed by a French edition of the same year (see Bib#4103038/Fr# 1425) and then with Sanchuniathonis historiarum Phoeniciae libros novem (Bremen, 1837, with full Greek and Latin facing text, see Bib# 1970352/Fr# 1426).

Though doubts were soon raised, exacerbated by Wagenfeld’s failure to display the original manuscript, the Phoenician specialist Wilhelm Gesenius joined Grotefend in credulous support –which both scholars later regretted, and Gesenius half-denied. Full exposure took place only with Karl Otfried Müller’s devastating review of the 1837 volume, (present here in this collection in 2 volumes), which demolished the text, but warmly praised Wagenfeld’s ‘Geist’, ‘Phantasie’, and grasp of ancient Greek-Oriental historiography, wishing him well in any future, worthier endeavour. See A. Grafton, Forgers and critics: creativity and duplicity in Western scholarship. London, 1990, p. 103.

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