oi.uchicago.

edu

The Graeco-Egyptian Magical

Papyri

Robert K. Ritner able the raw materials neces-

sary for a thorough study of
One of the expressed indirect cultural interaction between
goals of the Demotic Dictio- Egyptians and Greeks in the
nary Project is to make avail- Hellenistic period, when

MAGICAL PAPYRI 77
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j both cultures and languages Demotic spells as translated

shared the Nile Valley. The by Janet H . Johnson of the
nature and degree of such Oriental Institute. For the
interaction has long been dis- entire corpus of Greek and
cussed by scholars familiar Egyptian texts I have made
with Greek but unable to extensive annotations on
consult relevant Demotic Egyptian elements and in-
evidence. One of the most fluences common to both.
curious products of this The combined study of these
selective blindness regarding documents by Greek and
Hellenistic Egypt has been in Demotic scholars and histo-
the study of the period's rians of religion has been es-
magico-religious practices, in pecially fruitful. Perhaps the
which the standard publica- most striking result of this
tion of the Greek sources ne- examination is the recogni-
glects to include Demotic tion of pervasive Egyptian
parallels even where they ap- influence. The so-called
pear on the same papyrus and "Greek" magical texts are
are written by the same frequently Greek only in lan-
scribe. Greek sections within guage, with the gods invoked
Demotic spells are lifted from and the practices described
their contexts and presented being thoroughly Egyptian
in isolation—a technique with Greek, Mesopotamian,
which completely obscures and Hebrew deities and an-
the sociological and religious gels in frequent but second-
significance of these bilingual ary appearance. Even in
texts. spells of seemingly pure
The importance of these j Greek character where no
magical spells for insights Egyptian deity is invoked by
into Hellenistic religion and name, the construction of the
early Christianity has been spell may be borrowed from
recognized by H. D. Betz of Egyptian prototypes. Thus in
the Divinity School of the a'slander-spell' to Selene, the
University of Chicago, moon goddess, a series of
i whose Corpus Hellenisticum blasphemous statements are
Project on the Greek Magical uttered and then attributed to
Papyri has prepared new En- another in an attempt to
I glish translations of all rele- bring forth the wrath of the
j vant materials including the gods. This technique ("It is

78 PHILOLOGY
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not I who said it; it is X who these spells in their complete

said it.") may be traced to the
Pyramid Texts in Egypt,
almost three millennia before
this fourth century spell. The
presentation and analysis of
context allows for the first
time a careful investigation of
this facet of religious con-
tinuity and confrontation in
Hellenistic Egypt.

HITTITE DICTIONARY 79