Sanchuniathon's Urgeschichte der Phönizier in einem Auszuge aus der wieder aufgefundenen Handschrift von Philo's vollständiger Übersetzung. Nebst Bemerkungen von Fr. Wagenfeld. Mit einem Vorworte vom Dr. G. F. Grotefend [...]

Full title: Sanchuniathon's Urgeschichte der Phönizier in einem Auszuge aus der wieder aufgefundenen Handschrift von Philo's vollständiger Übersetzung. Nebst Bemerkungen von Fr. Wagenfeld. Mit einem Vorworte vom Dr. G. F. Grotefend, Director der Lyceums zu Hannover. Mit einem Facsimile.

8vo. pp. xxxii, 96, f. 1. Folded facsimile. “Asien’s Geschichte” stamped on title page.

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 the present work, 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 in this collection), 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 Müller’s collection Kleine deutsche Schriften über Religion, Kunst, Sprache, und Literatur, Leben, und Geschichte des Alterthums (2 vols, Breslau, 1847–48, see Bib# 2743846/Fr# 1427), 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.

Ernest Renan published a retrospective Mémoire sur l’origine et le caractère véritable de l’histoire phénicienne qui porte le nom de Sanchoniathon (1858, see Bib# 4103041/Fr# 1428). Hans Kasten compiled a bibliography of Wagenfeld by Hans Kasten (Borgfeld, 1944, see Bib# 4103042/Fr# 1429), apparently one of four produced thus, and otherwise unpublished.

Wagenfeld himself seems to have intended further impostures along the same lines, but may have heeded Müller’s kindly advise, devoting himself instead to an unexceptionable magnum opus of folklore studies, Bremer Volkssagen (1844–45, not present), which he completed, in spite of drink and discredit, one year before his premature death at just thirty-six.See J. A. Farrer, Literary forgeries. London and New York, 1907, pp. 191-201.

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