The Isiac Tablet of Cardinal Bembo
by W. Wynn Westcott
The Bembine Tablet, the Bembine Table of Isis or the Mensa Isiaca (Isiac Tablet) was an elaborate tablet of bronze with enamel and silver inlay of probable Roman origin and mimicking Egyptian style. It was used by the 17th century hermeticist Athanasius Kircher as the primary source for developing his translations of Egyptian hieroglyphics; the hieroglyphics on the Tablet are now known to be nonsense, and Kircher's translations spurious. It was also celebrated by later occultists including Eliphas Levi, William Wynn Westcott and Manly P. Hall as a key to interpreting the "Book of Thoth" or Tarot, and Thomas Taylor even claimed that this tablet formed the altar before which Plato stood as he received initiation within a subterranean hall in the Great Pyramid of Giza. The Tablet was named after Cardinal Bembo, a celebrated antiquarian who acquired it after the 1527 sack of Rome. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.