This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: "Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
.mw-parser-output .hidden-begin{box-sizing:border-box;width:100%;padding:5px;border:none;font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .hidden-title{font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;text-align:left}.mw-parser-output .hidden-content{text-align:left}You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (September 2010) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the German article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 8,933 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template ((Translated|de|Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais)) to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

"The Veiled Image at Sais" ("Das verschleierte Bild zu Saïs") is a 1795 ballad by Friedrich Schiller using ancient Greek, Egyptian and biblical motifs.

Development history

Schiller refers with his ballad to the motif of the veiled Isis, a very popular theme in artistic as well as intellectual contexts at that time. Furthermore, in the context of contemporary Freemasonry this motif has great significance and thus Schiller already takes it up in his essay Die Sendung Moses (1790), which is strongly inspired by the Freemason Karl Leonard Reinhold.[1] Then he also takes up the motif in his writing Vom Erhabenen (1793). This a philosophical work theorizing the sublime and it is inspired by Immanuel Kant, who used the veiled Isis of Sais as prime example for the sublime. Schiller's ballad is based on Plutarch's written record about a statue of Athena-Isis in the Egyptian city of Sais,[2] in which Plutarch states the statue bore an inscription saying "I am all that has been and is and shall be; and no mortal has ever lifted my veil."[3] A further basis is an anecdote of Pausanias, which is about a young man going mad by illegally opening the holy chest of a mystery cult. Both fundamental story elements, the veiled Isis as well as the mental disease from the illegal view of the holy mysteries, are already treated in Die Sendung Moses.

Literature

Primary literature

Secondary literature

References

  1. ^ George Cebadal: Goethe, Schiller und die verschleierte Wahrheit. Ein kleiner Beitrag zur Mysterienkultur in Goethes "Faust"-Dichtung und der Weimarer Klassik. Norderstedt 2019. p. 11.
  2. ^ Jan Assmann: Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais. Schillers Ballade und ihre ägyptischen und griechischen Hintergründe. Leipzig 1999. p. 13-16.
  3. ^ Plutarch: Isis and Osiris. Cap. 9.