Musaeum Clausum; or, Bibliotheca abscondita (Sealead Museum; or, The Hidden Library / 1684 Browne), book
Musaeum Clausum; or, Bibliotheca abscondita (1684) is a book by Thomas Browne.
Abstract
The treatise is a list of "remarkable books, antiquities, pictures and rarities of several kinds, scarce or never seen by any man now living."
The catalogue includes a reference to: "Mazhapha Einok, or, the Prophecy of Enoch, which Ægidius Lochiensis, a learned Eastern Traveller, told Peireschius that he had found in an old Library at Alexandria containing eight thousand volumes."
Browne referred to the information French scholar Peiresc received by Gilles de Loches (Ægidius Lochiensis) in 1633, as reported in the English edition of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc's biography by Pierre Gassendi, translated by William Rand in 1657. In 1636 Peresc actually purchased a copy of what he believed was the lost book of Enoch, but as Hiob Ludolf proved in 1681 it was a theological treatise merely containing a number of citations of and allusions to the Enoch tradition.
Editions
Written around 1675 and published posthumously in 1684.