Priests, Tongues, and Rites

Priests, Tongues, and Rites PDF Author: Jacco Dieleman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047406745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This book is an investigation into the sphere of production and use of two related bilingual magical handbooks found as part of a larger collection of magical and alchemical manuscripts around 1828 in the hills surrounding Luxor, Egypt. Both handbooks, dating to the Roman period, contain an assortment of recipes for magical rites in the Demotic and Greek language. The library which comprises these two handbooks is nowadays better known as the Theban Magical Library. The book traces the social and cultural milieu of the composers, compilers and users of the extant spells through a combination of philology, sociolinguistics and cultural analysis. To anybody working on Greco-Roman Egypt, ancient magic, and bilingualism this study is of significant importance.

Priests, Tongues, and Rites

Priests, Tongues, and Rites PDF Author: Jacco Dieleman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047406745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is an investigation into the sphere of production and use of two related bilingual magical handbooks found as part of a larger collection of magical and alchemical manuscripts around 1828 in the hills surrounding Luxor, Egypt. Both handbooks, dating to the Roman period, contain an assortment of recipes for magical rites in the Demotic and Greek language. The library which comprises these two handbooks is nowadays better known as the Theban Magical Library. The book traces the social and cultural milieu of the composers, compilers and users of the extant spells through a combination of philology, sociolinguistics and cultural analysis. To anybody working on Greco-Roman Egypt, ancient magic, and bilingualism this study is of significant importance.

Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority

Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority PDF Author: Heidi Marx-Wolf
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812292448
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
The people of the late ancient Mediterranean world thought about and encountered gods, angels, demons, heroes, and other spirits on a regular basis. These figures were diverse, ambiguous, and unclassified and were not ascribed any clear or stable moral valence. Whether or not they were helpful or harmful under specific circumstances determined if and what virtues were attributed to them. That all changed in the third century C.E., when a handful of Platonist philosophers—Plotinus, Origen, Porphyry, and Iamblichus—began to produce competing systematic discourses that ordered the realm of spirits in moral and ontological terms. In Spiritual Taxonomies and Ritual Authority, Heidi Marx-Wolf recounts how these Platonist philosophers organized the spirit world into hierarchies, or "spiritual taxonomies," positioning themselves as the high priests of the highest gods in the process. By establishing themselves as experts on sacred, ritual, and doctrinal matters, they were able to fortify their authority, prestige, and reputation. The Platonists were not alone in this enterprise, and it brought them into competition with rivals to their new authority: priests of traditional polytheistic religions and gnostics. Members of these rival groups were also involved in identifying and ordering the realm of spirits and in providing the ritual means for dealing with that realm. Using her lens of spiritual taxonomy to look at these various groups in tandem, Marx-Wolf demonstrates that Platonist philosophers, Christian and non-Christian priests, and gnostics were more interconnected socially, educationally, and intellectually than previously recognized.

Materia Magica

Materia Magica PDF Author: Andrew Wilburn
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472117793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Materia Magica approaches magic as a material endeavor, in which spoken spells, ritual actions, and physical objects all played vital roles in the performance of a rite. Through case studies drawing on objects excavated or discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century at three Mediterranean sites, Andrew T. Wilburn identifies previously unknown forms of magic. He discovers evidence of the practice of magic in objects of ancient daily life, suggesting that individuals frequently turned to magic, particularly in times of crises. Studying the remains of spells enacted by practitioners, Wilburn examines the material remains of magical practice by identifying and placing them within their archaeological contexts. His method of connecting an analysis of the texts and inscriptions found on artifacts of magic with a close consideration of the physical form of these objects illuminates an exciting path toward new discoveries in the field.

A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans

A Penitential Rite of the Ancient Mexicans PDF Author: Zelia Nuttall
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Indian mythology
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description


The Multilingual Experience in Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the Abbasids

The Multilingual Experience in Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the Abbasids PDF Author: Arietta Papaconstantinou
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351885375
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
For over a millennium and a half, Egypt was home to at least two commonly used languages of communication. Although this situation is by no means exceptional in the ancient and medieval worlds, the wealth of documentary sources preserved by Egypt's papyri makes the country a privileged observation ground for the study of ancient multilingualism. One of the greatest contributions of papyri to this subject is that they capture more linguistic registers than other ancient and medieval sources, since they range from very private documents not meant by their author to be read by future generations, to official documents produced by the administration, which are preserved in their original form. This collection of essays aims to make this wealth better known, as well as to give a diachronic view of multilingual practices in Egypt from the arrival of the Greeks as a political force in the country with Alexander the Great, to the beginnings of Abbasid rule when Greek, and slowly also Coptic, receded from the documentary record. The first section of the book gives an overview of the documentary sources for this subject, which for ancient history standards are very rich and as yet under-exploited. The second part contains several case studies from different periods that deal with language use in contexts of varying breadth and scope, from its the ritual use in magic or the liturgy to private letters and state administration.

The Egyptian Priests of the Graeco-Roman Period

The Egyptian Priests of the Graeco-Roman Period PDF Author: Marina Escolano-Poveda
Publisher: Harrassowitz
ISBN: 9783447120821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Throughout Egyptian history, high-ranking Egyptian priests were the scholars responsible for the creation of the very material that constituted the core of Egyptian intellectual culture. During the first millennium BCE, and particularly in the Graeco-Roman period (late fourth century BCE - fourth century CE), they were the social group in charge of mediating and negotiating the terms of the relationship between traditional Egyptian culture and the new foreign rulers of the country. As such, they are fundamental figures for our understanding of the greater Mediterranean and Near Eastern world of the time.00Marina Escolano-Poveda offers for the first time a detailed analysis of the most relevant Egyptian priestly characters from Egyptian and Graeco-Roman literary and paraliterary sources. The examination of these sources contrasts the self-presentation of Egyptian priests in texts created and circulated within the temple environment with images presented by outside sources, providing a solid base to analyze how these figures were seen in their historical milieu. In the second part of the book, the results of the previous analysis are contrasted with a series of widely-used models employed to understand the historical and intellectual context of Egyptian religion and the Egyptian priesthood in the Graeco-Roman period, questioning the usefulness and applicability of such models. Escolano-Poveda proposes new ways of understanding the role of the Egyptian priests in this context as fundamental actors in the development of the philosophical, scientific, and literary culture of the Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique worlds.00This Second Revised Edition corrects and updates the previous one, incorporating new discussions of recent developments in the analysis of each section of the book.

Making Amulets Christian

Making Amulets Christian PDF Author: Theodore de Bruyn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191075906
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Making Amulets Christian: Artefacts, Scribes, and Contexts examines Greek amulets with Christian elements from late antique Egypt in order to discern the processes whereby a customary practice--the writing of incantations on amulets--changed in an increasingly Christian context. It considers how the formulation of incantations and amulets changed as the Christian church became the prevailing religious institution in Egypt in the last centuries of the Roman empire. Theodore de Bruyn investigates what we can learn from incantations and amulets containing Christian elements about the cultural and social location of the people who wrote them. He shows how incantations and amulets were indebted to rituals or ritualizing behaviour of Christians. This study analyzes different types of amulets and the ways in which they incorporate Christian elements. By comparing the formulation and writing of individual amulets that are similar to one another, one can observe differences in the culture of the scribes of these materials. It argues for 'conditioned individuality' in the production of amulets. On the one hand, amulets manifest qualities that reflect the training and culture of the individual writer. On the other hand, amulets reveal that individual writers were shaped, whether consciously or inadvertently, by the resources they drew upon-by what is called 'tradition' in the field of religious studies.

Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition

Continuity and Innovation in the Magical Tradition PDF Author: Gideon Bohak
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004203516
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
This volume brings together thirteen studies by as many experts in the study of one or more ancient or medieval magical traditions, from ancient Mesopotamia and Pharaonic and Greco-Roman Egypt to the Greek world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It lays special emphasis on the recurrence of similar phenomena in magical texts as far apart as the Akkadian cuneiform tablets and an Arabic manuscript bought in Egypt in the late-twentieth century. Such similarities demonstrate to what extent many different cultures share a “magical logic” which is strikingly identical, and in particular they show the recurrence of certain phenomena when magical practices are transmitted in written form and often preserve, adopt and adapt much older textual units.

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt

The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt PDF Author: Christina Riggs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199571457
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 814

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Book Description
This handbook, arranged in seven thematic sections, is unique in drawing together many different strands of research on Roman Egypt, in order to suggest both the state of knowledge in the field and the possibilities for collaborative, synthetic, and interpretive research.

Greco-Egyptian Interactions

Greco-Egyptian Interactions PDF Author: Ian Rutherford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199656126
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Contact and interaction between Greek and Egyptian culture can be traced in different forms over more than a millennium: from the sixth century BC, when Greeks visited Egypt for the sake of tourism or trade, through to the Hellenistic period, when Egypt was ruled by the Macedonian-Greek Ptolemaic dynasty who encouraged a mixed Greek and Egyptian culture, and even more intensely in the Roman Empire, when Egypt came to be increasingly seen as a place of wonder and a source of magic and mystery. This volume addresses the historical interaction between the ancient Greek and Egyptian civilizations in these periods, focusing in particular on literature and textual culture. Comprising fourteen chapters written by experts in the field, each contribution examines such cultural interaction in some form, whether influence between the two cultures, or the emergence of bicultural and mixed phenomena within Egypt. A number of the chapters draw on newly discovered Egyptian texts, such as the Book of Thoth and the Book of the Temple, and among the wide range of topics covered are religion (such as prophecy, hymns, and magic), philosophy, historiography, romance, and translation.