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5.0 out of 5 stars
Ian Myles Slater on: Magic and Syncretic Religion, January 19, 2005
This review is from: The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells: Texts (Paperback)
According to the introduction to this volume, among other competent sources, one of the more interesting shocks to the delicate sensibilities of nineteenth-century classical scholars was delivered by papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt. The serene and rational "classical" Greeks of their (mainly German) imaginations turned out to be human beings with messy fears, desires, hatreds, and jealousies, and a willingness to turn to magic (ugh!) to obtain their ends. There they were, in Greek, actual "magical papyri" -- spell books, that is, not so much documents purporting to be potent agents in themselves, in the old Egyptian manner of ritually empowered images and paintings.
A common reaction: Let's keep it a secret!
It didn't work. A younger generation of scholars (also mainly, but not entirely, German) began mining the texts for information on daily life (astrological papyri proved more helpful) and religion (more successfully) in late antiquity. Texts scattered in museums and published, if at all, in a variety of journals, had to be assembled and properly edited. Some early efforts were exemplary, some problematic (and some both). It sometimes seemed as if a curse had been laid on the enterprise. Early deaths, the First World War, and economic chaos delayed the publication of a carefully edited volume of collected papyri (Greek passages only). The second volume survived World War II only in proof copies. Meanwhile, more papyri turned up, and the project had to be re-done.
One of the more fortunate results of this delay is the present volume, a careful translation of the Greek papyri containing magic spells, along with the Demotic (late Egyptian in a native "shorthand") and Coptic (late Egyptian in a mostly Greek-derived script) passages in the same manuscripts. A team of scholars worked on the translations, which come with concise introductions and notes. It is based on the arrangement in the earlier text editions (although, frustratingly, it does not come with page-references to the first edition, used in over half a century of scholarly literature).
A second volume, including fuller references, and, above all, indexes, was announced, but so far does not seem to have appeared. This is frustrating, given the number of topics, names, and materials mentioned in just the larger manuscript collections.
As for the work at hand, it is fascinating, if inherently frustrating. We have parts of a library of someone who may have been a working magician, with the habits of a scholar, and actual charms and amulets for a less discriminating clientele. There are instructions on how to pull off party tricks, win (or torment) a lover, or influence important people, as well as protect yourself from the spells of others.
Greek gods mingle with Egyptian deities older than the Pyramids, and Mesopotamian (even Sumerian) Powers make brief appearances. Garbled bits of Jewish and Christian lore are sprinkled throughout. The extent to which any of this represents a real synthesis of religious beliefs (syncretism), or is an unthinking compilation of whatever might give access to power, is a question long debated. I suspect that every instance needs a separate answer, and in most cases we will never have one.
At least four fairly large groups of readers should find the book invaluable.
Those interested in Egypt will welcome a mass of post-Pharaonic material, a lot of it with good parallels from earlier centuries. This has a large and growing bibliography. With some reservations, I would suggest Bob Brier's "Ancient Egyptian Magic" as a place to start, with the bibliography in Betz for additional titles.
For the really serious, David Frankfurter's "Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance" (1998) will be rewarding, but not as a start. It is available in paperback from Princeton University Press in the MYTHOS series, as is a revised version of Garth Fowden's "The Egyptian Hermes: An Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind" (1993; originally 1986), another valuable work intended for relatively advanced students.
Those interested in the gods of Greece will find here much evidence of how they were viewed in popular (rather than elite) culture, and what happened to them when carried abroad by their worshippers. As supplements on these areas, I suggest two far-ranging surveys, Fritz Graf's "Magic in the Ancient World" and Matthew W. Dickie's "Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World." I have some methodological concerns with both, and with what I regard as some serious errors by Dickie (particularly regarding Mesopotamian and Jewish topics), but both display immense learning and intelligence. Graf is easier, and also has some excellent discussions of the Egyptian material to add to Brier, with more bibliography. With a narrower range, but extremely important, is Christopher A. Faraone's "Ancient Greek Love Magic," which deals directly with a whole class of texts translated in Betz et al., and places them in a long cultural context.
Thirdly, students of early Jewish mysticism will at last get ready access to texts which have been used to date "Merkabah" and "Hekhalot" texts (concerning heavenly ascents and visions of the Divine Throne), which survive only in medieval manuscripts. There is a remarkable overlap of "secret names" of God and angels, and some shared ideas of the cosmos, and how to obtain visionary knowledge. The bibliography for this is large, and I have yet to find a good introductory volume; for now, see my review of Rebecca Macy Lesses's "Ritual Practices to Gain Power: Angels, Incantations, and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism.""
Finally, the late pagan spells fade off into the Coptic literature of early Christian Egypt, although "Christian Magic" usually has received separate treatments, and is only incidentally represented in this collection. A good place to start (and containing some minor overlaps) is "Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power" (1994), translations with commentary, edited by Marvin W. Meyer and Richard Smith. The supposed limits of official Christianity, superficially Christianized paganism, fringe Christianity, and Gnosticism, are crossed and recrossed in the texts presented. This too is available, slightly revised, in the Princeton MYTHOS series of trade paperbacks (1999).
As for practicing magicians -- everyone should know that you can't just use someone else's book of spells, you need authorization and personal instruction! And a copy made personally from a manuscript....
(Reposted from my "anonymous" review, originally posted September 9, 2003 )
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