Henri Frankfort, Aby Warburg and “Mythopoeic Thought”

Abstract

This is the text of a lunchtime lecture given at the Warburg Institute in the spring of 2004. It formed part of a series concerned with past Warburg scholars, and was devoted to the work of Henri Frankfort, Director of the Institute from 1949 to 1954. The first third of the lecture was a rapid account of his career; the remainder of the lecture was an analysis and criticism of the concept of ‘primitive thinking’ in the work of Frankfort and Aby Warburg.

Keywords

• Henri Frankfort
• Aby Warburg
• mythopoeic
• primitive
• pre-Greek
• animism
• ancient Egypt
• ancient Near East