 Leading scholars included, among others, Martin of Dacia and Thomas of Erfurt (see "Modistae").Linguists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods such as Johannes Goropius Becanus, Athanasius Kircher and John Wilkins were infatuated with the idea of a philosophical language reversing the confusion of tongues, influenced by the gradual discovery of Chinese characters and Egyptian hieroglyphs ("Hieroglyphica").This thought parallels the idea that there might be a universal language of music.