The Wisdom of Thoth

Magical Texts in Ancient Mediterranean Civilisations

Grażyna Bąkowska-Czerner, Alessandro Roccati, Agata Świerzowska, Grażyna Bąkowska-Czerner, Alessandro Roccati, Agata Świerzowska

• Publisher: Archaeopress
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781784912475
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784912482
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Archeologia

This volume represents a selection of contributions on Mediterranean themes from a wider international interdisciplinary conference on Magical Texts in Ancient Civilizations, organised by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilizations at Jagiellonian University in Kraków in Poland between 27-28 June 2013. The meeting welcomed researchers from Hungary, Italy, Poland and Ukraine, covering various disciplines including comparative civilizations, comparative religions, linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, history and philosophy. In the past 'magic' was often misunderstood as irrational behaviour, in contrast to the tradition of philosophical or rational thought mostly based on Greek models. Evidence collected from ancient high cultures, like that of Pharaonic Egypt, includes massive amounts of documents and treatises of all kinds related to what has been labelled 'magic'. Today it cannot be written off as merely a primitive or 'lesser human' phenomenon: the awareness of magic remains to the present day in many societies, at all social levels, and has not been generally replaced by what might be considered as more advanced thinking. The researches in this volume focus heavily on Egypt (in particular Predynastic, Pharaonic, Hellenistic, Roman and Christian evidence), but Near Eastern material was also presented from Pagan (Ugaritic) and Christian (Syriac) times.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface 1 Alessandro Roccati Thoth on magical gems 3 Grażyna Bąkowska-Czerner, Agata Świerzowska Mag
• Contents
• The Pyramid Texts as Magical Texts?
• Ramesside magical books in Turin
• Magicians’ instruments in PGM and the archaeological evidence: some examples
• Egyptian Theological Lore in PGM IV: a religious-historical commentary
• Sorcery among powerless corpses. An interpretation of the ‘restless dead’ in Greek curses, imprecations and verse inscriptions
• Thoth on magical gems
• Magic in the sign: iconic writings in the Litany of Neith at Esna and the performative nature of the divine name (Esna 216.1–4)
• Genius loci. Some religious and magical aspects of graffiti in the ‘tomb of Memnon’ (Ramesses VI) in the Valley of the Kings1
• Adam Łukaszewicz
• Egyptian Predynastic tokens – traces of magic or economic activity? The beginnings of abstract writing and calculating system or a relic of early magical practices
• The protection of the body in ancient Egyptian texts
• Alphabetic magic: traces of a new version of the Cyranides
• Jesus in ancient pagan magic: the Anna Perenna drawings
• Magic in the iconography of 21st Dynasty coffins and papyri
• The discovery of the fountain of Anna Perenna and its influence on the study of ancient magic