- 1 Faraone – Torallas Tovar (2022a) = GEMF, with a companion volume of essays: Faraone – Torallas To (...)
1In the last stages of co-directing the first volume of a new edition and annotated English translation of the Greek and Egyptian magical formularies of Roman Egypt1 some new ideas came to mind about two somewhat damaged papyri, first how they might be restored, but more importantly how they give us insight into patterns of design found more widely in the extant magical texts. The first is an invocation to Hekate-Selene that consists of a series of phrases describing the significant actions of the goddess, each followed by nonsensical magical name, a pattern that we find elsewhere in the Greek magical papyri, especially in invocations of Helios and Selene, as well as in some non-magical aretalogies of Isis. The second is a recipe for an amulet that combines a sequence of similar magical names arranged in a block, followed by a prayer, a pattern that we also find elsewhere in the handbooks, where they are first laid out in a similar manner as a facsimile of the amulet itself, but where in the later fourth century CE, the design is signaled simply by the technical term “like a little brick (plinthion)”. Such an arrangement seems to have been particularly popular in amulets against gout, a tradition that continues down into the fifth century CE.
- 2 Originally published and annotated in Brashear (1990) and (1992). I generally follow the greatly (...)
2A papyrus formulary that dates to the late third—early fourth century CE, preserves an invocation to Hecate-Selene that is damaged in several places:2
ἐπικαλοῦμαί c̣[ε τοῖc] θεῖοιc ὀ-
νόμαcι ὦ δέ[cποτι, ἡ α]ἷθοc ἀ- 75
π̣ὸ̣ τ̣ῆ̣c ἀνατολῆ[c ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣] λ̣αμβά-
νουcα κoμια, ἡ[ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣]κ̣α̣τ̣ὰ
τὴν τῶν ἐν τῷ [οὐρανῷ] ἀ̣τέρων
πάντων δύναμ[ιν ca 8 ] ̣ ̣φ̣[ ̣]
ἡ [τ]ὸν cπόρον πάν[τ]α̣ [ ca 8 ] 80
Νε̣β̣ουτουcουμηθ[ ca 9 ]
προcαποκρίνουcα α̣ ̣[ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣]
πληc̣μονὴ τῆc γῆc νουτηρ,̣ ἡ̣ [τὴν]
γέν̣ν̣α̣ν πάντων καταδείξα[c]α̣
μο̣c̣ι̣ο̣υ̣τε, ἡ̣ τ̣ὰc Μοίραc ἐκ τῶν Mο̣[ι-] 85
ρῶν̣ διαπλάcαcα [ ̣ ̣]μο̣υ̣θειρω,
ἡ τ̣ὰ [ ̣ ̣ ̣]δ̣ι̣α̣ α̣ν̣οηc[ ̣]α̣ [ἐ]νιαύcια διεξ-
ά̣γο̣[υcα,] ̣c̣α̣ ̣ ̣ ̣φ̣, ἡ τὰ μ̣ηπλ̣η̣ι̣α̣ν̣αι̣[ ̣ ̣] ̣[
μη ̣[ ̣ ̣ ̣] καταδείξαcα μααραω̣ρ̣
ἡ τὰc ἀκολούθουc νύκταc ταῖc 90
ἡμέραι̣c ποιήcαcα εcαω̣οψ, ἡ
μερίcαcα αθυ̣ραc̣ τρ⟨ε⟩ῖc̣ ἡμέραc̣
χιωουχ, [ἡ] ε̣π̣[
c̣κοτει[
3This is the translation of the editors:
I invoke you by [your] divine names, (75) O [Mistress], (i.e. you, who are) the gleam from the rising of the [moon], …, you, who took … komia, [you, who] … under the influence of all the stars in the [sky], … ph … (80) you, who [nourish?] every offspring … neboutousoumēth, … [you], who answer all questions with additions, a[… you, who are the?] abundance of the earth noutēr, [you], who have revealed the generation of all things (85) mosioute, you, who have completely fashioned the Moirai from the Moirai [..] moutheirō, you, who manage the annual … [.]sa[..]ph, you who have revealed the … maaraōr, (90) You, who have made the nights follow the days, esaōops, you, who have divided days… chiōouch … in the darkness…
4We should note that the editors twice restore text that equates the goddess with natural phenomena (my emphases): “O [Mistress], (i.e. you, who are) the gleam from the rising of the [moon]” (75–77) and “[… you, who are the] abundance of the earth” (82–83). We shall see, however, that the parallels adduced below suggest that in this sequence the goddess is never equated with natural phenomena, but rather she exerts her powers upon them, a claim that is typical to both aretalogies and hymns. In the translation above, the editors also restore “[moon]” to the text in line 76, because the rubric to this recipe is “Favor-procedure (performed) before the rising of the moon in the evening as the sun is setting” (GEMF 51.59–61)
5Despite the damage to the papyrus, we can see, in fact, a distinct pattern of praise: an attributive articular phrase that (i) begins with the feminine article in the nominative, (ii) ends with a feminine active participle, and (iii) usually contains either a prepositional phrase or genitive that describes the extent of the goddess’ power. This phrase is then followed by (iv) a nonsensical magical name (rendered in small caps in the translations above and below) that seems to be one of the “divine names” that are mentioned at the start (l. 74–75). These magical names are perhaps attached to the goddess at those times, when she is thought to perform the actions described by the participles, for example, in lines 83–86 and 90–92:
ἡ̣ [τὴν] γέν̣ν̣α̣ν πάντων καταδείξα[c]α̣, Μο̣c̣ι̣ο̣υ̣τε,
ἡ̣ τ̣ὰc Μοίραc ἐκ τῶν Mο̣[ι]ρῶν̣ διαπλάcαcα, [ ̣]μο̣υ̣θειρω,
…
ἡ τὰc ἀκολούθουc νύκταc ταῖc ἡμέραι̣c ποιήcαcα, Εcαω̣οψ,
you, who reveal [the] generation of all things, mosioute,
you, who completely fashion the Moirai from the Moirai, [. .]moutheirō,
…
you, who make the nights follow the days, esaōops,
6We see a similar pattern (without the magical name) in a short section of the first century BCE Isis aretalogy from Kyme, although here the articular phrase is attached to the first-person formula ἐγώ εἰμι, that is a hallmark of the genre (7–9):3
ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ καρπὸν ἀνθρώποις εὑροῦσα.
ἐγώ εἰμι μήτηρ Ὥρου βασιλέως.
ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἐν τῷ τοῦ Κυνὸς ἄστρῳ ἐπιτέλλουσα.
ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ παρὰ γυναιξὶ θεὸς καλουμένη.
[7] I am the one who discovered produce for men.
[8] I am the mother of Horus the king.
[9] I am the one who rises in the Dog Star.
[10] I am the one called goddess among women.
- 4 There seems to be a similar pattern in POxy XI 1380, a papyrus list of the praises of Isis, that (...)
7Here we can see that three of the four lines in this prose aretalogy follow the pattern outlined above for GEMF 51: an articular phrase that begins with the feminine article and ends with a participle.4
8We find a similar effect in a hymn to Hecate-Selene composed in dactylic hexameters and preserved in a magical handbook (PGM IV 2806–11) that dates half a millennium later than the Kyme aretalogy:
ἡ χέραc ὁπλίζουcα κελαιναῖc λαμπάcι δειναῖc,
ἡ φοβερῶν ὀφίων χαίτην cείουcα μετώποιc,
ἡ ταύρων μύκημα κατὰ cτομάτων ἀνιεῖcα,
ἡ νηδὺν φολίcιν πεπυκαcμένη ἑρπυcτήρων,
who arm your hands with terrible, smoky torches,
who shake on your forehead a shock of fearful serpents,
who let loose from your mouths the bellowing of bulls,
who have closed up your womb with the horny scales of reptiles…
- 5 Other examples from the magical hymns suggests a general, but rather flexible pattern in which a (...)
9Here, however, since the end of articular unit coincides with the end of the hexametrical verse, the participle can be placed in any position in the phrase, where the meter permits, unlike in the two prose versions given above, where the participles generally close off the phrase.5
10Even in the more damaged portions of GEMF 51.74–94 we can see that the same pattern is repeated nearly a dozen times (the following abbreviations are used to track the missing elements: Direct Object = DO; Prepositional Phrase = PPh; and Feminine Active Participle = FAP):
1 [ἡ τὸ α]ἷθος ἀπ̣ὸ̣ τ̣ῆ̣ς̣ ἀ̣ν̣ατολῆ[ς ἡλίου] λ̣αμβάνουσα, Koμια
2 ἡ [+ DO] κ̣α̣τ̣ὰ τὴν τῶν ἐν τῷ [οὐρανῷ] ἀστέρων πάντων δύναμ[ιν +FAP + Ακτι]οφ[ι](?)
3 ἡ [τ]ὸν σπόρον πάν[τ]α̣ [+ PPh + FAP,] Νε̣β̣ουτουcουμηθ
4 [ἡ + DO +PPh] προσαποκρίνουσα̣, Α̣ ̣[ ̣]
5 [ἡ τὴν] πλησμονὴ⟨ν⟩ τῆς γῆς ⟨FAP⟩, Νουτηρ,
6 ἡ̣ [τὴν] γέν̣ν̣α̣ν πάντων καταδείξα[σ]α̣, Μοσιο̣υτε
7 ἡ̣ τ̣ὰς Μοίραc ἐκ τῶν Mο̣[ι]ρῶν̣ διαπλάσασα,[ ̣ ̣]μουθειρω
8 ἡ τ̣ὰ [ ̣ ̣ ̣]δ̣ι̣α̣ α̣ν̣οησ[ ̣]α̣ [ἐ]νιαύcια διεξά̣γο̣[υσα,] ̣σ̣α̣ ̣ ̣ ̣φ̣
9 ἡ τὰ μ̣ηπλ̣η̣ι̣α̣ ν̣αι̣[ ̣ ̣]μη[ ̣ ̣ ̣] καταδείξασα. Μααραω̣ρ
10 ἡ τὰc ἀκολούθους νύκτας ταῖc ἡμέραι̣ς ποιήσασα, Εσαω̣οψ,
11 ἡ μερίσασα Αθυ̣ραc̣ τρ⟨ε⟩ῖc̣ ἡμέραc̣, Χιωουχ
- 6 Brashear (1990), ad loc., originally suggested restoration of the article [τήν] in no. 6 and also (...)
- 7 Brashear (1990), ad loc.
- 8 Ptol. Tetrabibl. 1.4; I thank Ian Moyer for the reference.
11Encouraged by the patterns discussed above, I have made a number of modifications (underlined above) to the text of GEMF 51. The most notable pattern is the regular use of the definite article just after the initial ἡ, which suggests the addition in nos. 5 and 6 of the article [τήν] and final nu of πληc̣μονή⟨ν⟩, although this section also seems to have lost its participle (FAP), as there is no room for it on the papyrus.6 Τhe pattern also suggests that in nos. 8 and 9 we articulate the first nine letters as τ̣ὰ [ ̣ ̣ ̣]δ̣ι̣α̣ and τὰ μ̣ηπλ̣η̣ι̣α̣, although it is entirely unclear to what these neuter plural words refer, because the first is missing 4–5 letters and in the second five of its seven letters cannot be securely read. Finally in section no. 1, I adopt Brashear’s suggestion that we restore ἡλίου to the lacuna,7 relying on the idea that the goddess described here is the moon goddess, Isis or Selene, who is taking the gleam of the sun; presumably a reference to the Greek idea, that, when the moon reflects the light of the sun, it is taking light away from it.8
12Knowledge of this pattern also gives us insight into how to repair the end of the sequence, where the surviving text itself seems to have been garbled in transmission (90–93):
10 ἡ τὰc ἀκολούθους νύκτας ταῖc ἡμέραι̣ς ποιήσασα, Εσαω̣οψ,
11 ἡ μερίσασα Αθυ̣ραc̣ τρ⟨ε⟩ῖc̣ ἡμέραc̣, Χιωουχ
13Here the papyrus is undamaged, but the pattern in no. 11 is clearly disrupted: no article + noun in the accusative case follows ἡ and the feminine participle appears at the start of the phrase, rather than the end. One possible suggestion would be that the exemplar was damaged and somehow conflated two different descriptions:
10 ἡ τὰc ἀκολούθους νύκτας ταῖc ἡμέραι̣ς ποιήσασα, Εσαω̣οψ,
11 ἡ . . . . . . μερίσασα, Αθυ̣ρ,̣
12 ⟨ἡ⟩ . . . αcτριc̣ ἡμέραc̣ . . ., Χιωουχ.
14A division into twelve sections may, moreover, reflect the twelve months of the Egyptian year, especially since the last two magical words (Αθυ̣ρ and Χιωουχ) might be corrupted forms of two contiguous months of the Egyptian calendar: Ἀθύρ and Χοιάκ.
- 9 This version has clearly suffered in transmission, as we can tell from the differences between th (...)
15But given the fact that a moon goddess is the addressee, it is far more likely that the number twelve reflects the number of hours in the night when the moon appears. This is an especially attractive idea, because elsewhere in the magical handbooks the twelve hours of the night or day appear as structuring devices in invocations of the moon or sun. These twelve-fold invocations, moreover, sometimes end individually with a nonsensical magical word, just as we have seen above in GEMF 51. At PGM III 501–532, for example, Helios is addressed in terms of the forms he takes or produces during the twelve hours of the day; the papyrus is damaged, but the first six hours are fairly intact:9
[First] hour: monkey, silver-fir, aphanos-stone, … bird; phrouer.
Second hour: unicorn, persea-tree, “pottery-stone”, halouchakos bird, ichneumon, bazêtôphôth.
Third hour: cat, ficus, samouchos-stone, parrot, frog; akrammachamarei.
Fourth hour: bull, …i-tree, opal, turtle-dove, bull; damnameneus.
Fifth hour: lion, buckthorn, magnetite, crocodile; phôkengeps euaretathou mison ktaikt.
Sixth hour: donkey, bears-foot tree, lapis lazuli, “crystal”-fish, [ox?], eiau akrilux.
- 10 Each of these statements is followed by a short request asking Helios to give strength, glory, se (...)
16For each hour, the scribe has added a magical name at the end, which is presumably Helios’ secret name during that hour. In another prayer to Helios, we see an abbreviated form of the same list that mentions only the first animal (PGM IV 1647–1695):10
In the 1st hour you have the form of a cat, your name is pharakounêth.
In the 2nd hour: you have the form of a dog, your name is souphi
In the 3rd hour: you have the form of serpent, your name is amekranebecheo thôyth.
In the 4th hour: you have the form of scarab, your name is senthenips.
In the 5th hour: you have the form of donkey, your name is enphanchouph
In the 6th hour: you have the form of lion, your name is bai solbai
In the 7th hour: you have the form of goat, your name is oumesthôth.
In the 8th hour: you have the form of bull, your name is diatiphê.
In the 9th hour: you have the form of falcon; your name is phêous phôouth
In the 10th hour: you have the form of a baboon, your name is besbyki.
In the 11th hour: you have the form of an ibis, your name is mou kôph.
In the 12th hour: you have the form of a crocodile, your name aekthoê.
17These two lists are not, however, from the same source: all of the magical names are different and the correspondences between the hour and the animal are not always the same.
18We see a similar pattern, finally, in an invocation to the Moon, which includes a request that she send forth a different messenger at each of the twelve hours of the night; here, again, each request ends with a magical name: (PGM VII 900–905):
send forth your angel who is appointed over the 1st hour: menebain,
and the one over the 2nd hour: neboun,
and the one over the 3rd hour: lêmnei,
and the one over the 4th hour: mormoth,
and the one over the 5th hour: nouphier,
and the one over the 6th hour: chokbokeath,
and the one over the 7th hour: orbeeta,
and the one over the 8th hour: panmoth,
and the one over the 9th hour: thymenphri,
and the one over the 10th hour: sarnochoibal,
and the one over the 11th hour: bathiabbl,
and the one over the 12th hour: akbrathiabri
19Realization of this general pattern allows us, finally, to tweak the translation of GEMF 51 a bit more, with the understanding that Hekate-Selene is the subject of each of the twelve iterations:
1 [you, who take] the gleam from the rising [of ⟨the⟩ sun], komia,
2 [you, who…….] according to the power of all the stars in the [sky], [akti]oph[i,
- 11 This neuter plural adjective either modifies the missing neuter plural object of the participle o (...)
- 12 This is probably a reference to the annual flooding of the Nile River, see, e.g., Isidorus, Hymn (...)
3 you, who [nourish?] every harvest, neboutousoumēth,
4 [you, who] set aside […………], a[…
5 [you, who increase(?) the] abundance of the earth, noutēr,
6 you], who reveal [the] generation of all things, mosioute,
7 ou, who completely fashion the Moirai from the Moirai, [..]moutheirō,
8 you, who annually11 lead12 the …. [flood(?)]… [.]sa[..]ph,
9 you who reveal the mêplêia(?) …, maaraōr
10 you, who make the nights follow the days, esaōps,
11 you, who divide… …, athur
12 [you, who]… … astris(?) days (?), chiōouch
20These boasts about the goddess’ powers seem, therefore, to be concerned primarily with her direct effect on the physical world, beginning with the sun and the stars (1–2), then moving on to the crops of earth (3 and 5), animal life (6?) and the fates of human beings (7). The last four segments seem to refer to the goddess’ role in arranging time, first the yearly flood (8), then perhaps the months in a lacuna (9), then days and nights (10). But given the damage to the text, this is as far as we can go. We can see, however, how this lacunose section of GEMF 51 reflects two different types of invocation in the magical formularies from Roman Egypt: (i) an earlier poetic and/or rhetorical tradition of anaphora at the start of a verse or phrase within which the praiseworthy action of the deity is presented in a participle; and (ii) a much later tradition of attaching single magical names to invocations to Helios or Selene that are keyed to the divisions of the night and day into twelve hours.
- 13 The word plinthion is a technical term used in the magical handbooks. GMPT and GEMF both translat (...)
21GEMF 9 (SM II no. 74) is a fragment of a second-century CE papyrus roll, which preserves among other things a damaged recipe for an amulet, whose rubric has been restored as [πρὸc ἰcχιά]δα (“For sciatica”), a rubric that is otherwise unattested in magical recipes. The medium and design of this amulet are, however, similar to a number of gout amulets that use tin and arrange their magical names in the form of a “little brick” (plinthion).13 My goal in this section is not to insist that the GEMF 9 was, in fact, a recipe for a gout amulet, but rather to trace a centuries-long pattern in Greek recipes of this plinthion-type, noting especially how scribes used indentation to illustrate how an amulet or curse was to be inscribed and finally to show how this second- and third-century scribal convention of presenting “facsimiles” of amulets and curses eventually gave way to detailed descriptions of the object that use the technical term plinthion to ensure the rectangular arrangement of magical names.
- 14 The text of GEMF 9 (= SM II no. 74) was edited by Maltomini and in the main follows his original (...)
22The text of GEMF 9 is quite short:14
[ ca 9 ]δα[ ]
[ ̣ ̣ ̣ καcc]ι̣τέρ{ιν}ον λε̣υ̣κ̣[
10 [ ca 7 ] ̣ ἐπίγραφε̣·
[ια]εωβα̣φ̣ρ̣ε-
[νε]μουνοθ̣ι̣-
[λα]ρ̣ικριφιαευε̣-
αιφιρκιραλιθο-
15 νυομ̣ενερφα-
βωεαι,
ἀπάλλαξον τὸν 𐅉 τῆc 𐅉 [παντὸc]
δε̣ι̣ν̣ο̣ῦ πόνου καὶ πάcηc ν̣[όcου
νω̣ ̣ ν̣ε̣ύρων καὶ ὀcτέω[ν
20 [ ̣ ̣ ̣ ̣] c̣̣τοc[ ̣ ̣]ρ̣υ̣περι̣τ̣[
[ ca 10 ] ̣ενειλη[
…
on white tin(?)
… write:
iaeōbaphre-
nemounothi-
larikriphiaeue-
aiphirkiralitho-
nuomenerpha-
bōeai,
deliver him, NN, son of her, NN, from [every] grievous pain and every [illness] of the [tendons(?)], sinews and bones …………. roll up(?)…
8 [πρὸc ἰcχιά]δα? 17 δ(ε)ῖ(να) bis || 18–19 τό]|νω̣ν̣? ἰ]|νῶ̣ν̣? || 20 ὑ̣πὲρ? περὶ̣? || 21 ἐνειλή[cαc?, ἐνείλη[cον?,] ̣εν εἰλη[c-?
23It is striking that in lines 11–16, the scribe has indented the magical words that are to be inscribed on the tin amulet, but he did not do the same with the prayer that follows in lines 17–21, which was also inscribed on the same tin lamella. These magical words comprise, in fact, the well-known iaeō-palindrome, which is usually spelled out continuously in the formularies. Here the scribe felt compelled break up the palindrome and present it as a series of shorter words, each between 9 and 14 letters long, that are centered in the column and are designed, no doubt to illustrate precisely how they are to appear on the tin sheet.
- 15 There is a unique parallelogram version of this design at PGM XIII 888–913 also inscribed on a go (...)
24This tall rectangular design is, in fact, described in the later handbooks by the Greek technical term plinthion (see note 13) and appears most clearly in the arrangement of the various seven-fold lists of the seven vowels, for example, as they are written out on an unbaked ostracon in a recipe for an erotic curse that involves burning (PGM XXXVI 204–210):15
ΑΑΑΑΑΑΑ
ΕΕΕΕΕΕΕΕ
ΗΗΗΗΗΗΗ
Ι Ι Ι Ι Ι Ι Ι Ι
ΟΟΟΟΟΟΟ
ΥΥΥΥΥΥΥ
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
25The seven vowels appear in another kind of format on a small (3.5 × 3.5 cm) gold lamella of Roman date from Vars, France (GMA 9):
26The amulet carries no other text, so we do not know what it was used for, but a recipe in a fourth-century CE handbook reveals the technical term that scribes used in the later periods to avoid writing out the entire rectangle (PGM IV 1335): αεηιουω πλινθίον, “aeêiouô, (i.e., as a) little brick”.
- 16 I use the translation of K. Dosoo, A. Nodar Dominguez, and P. Sarischuli in GEMF 16.
27The GEMF 9 scribe presumably divided up and indented the magical palindrome in order that the users of the handbook would know how to lay it out on the tin amulet. We see the same phenomenon in a bilingual Demotic and Greek recipe, also for gout (GEMF 16.1003–1014):16
Another amulet for the foot of the gouty man: You should write these names on a strip of silver or tin; you should put it on the skin of a deer; you should bind it to the foot of the man named (on his 2 feet).
θεμβαραθεμ
ουρεμβρενουτιπε
αιοχθου
σεμμαραθεμμου
ναιοου, may he(?) NN, whom she(?) NN bore, cease from every pain which is in his 2 knees and his 2 feet. You do it while the moon is in (the constellation) Leo.
- 17 For this phenomenon in the bilingual handbooks see Dieleman (2005), p. 120–129.
- 18 For deer-skin as a container of other gout amulets, see Luc. Pseudol. 7: where a character claims (...)
- 19 Griffith – Thompson (1921), p. 104, and Dieleman (2005), p. 312. E. Love tells me by e-mail that (...)
28A number of details suggest this text is a full or partial translation of an originally Greek recipe.17 The scribe or his exemplar, for example, does not give the magical names in the Demotic script, as he does elsewhere, but rather he copied them over in the original Greek alphabet as shown above. And he also wrote the words for “deer-skin” twice: first in Demotic and then in Greek, as if he was worried that he would not get the Demotic translation precisely right.18 A further sign appears at the end of the rubric above, where he rendered in alphabetic Demotic the Greek word ποδαγρῶν (plural genitive of ποδαγρής), “of gouty men”.19 The similarities between this gout recipe and the recipe in GEMF 9 are obvious. Both tell us to engrave a strip of metal (tin or silver) with magical names and a brief prayer and here, too, the Demotic scribe, presumably following his Greek exemplar, indented the magical names, but not the prayer that follows. This suggests that both scribes were using an exemplar or abiding by a scribal convention according to which some magical names were written in blocks and formatted differently than the prayers that follow, in order to provide the user with a facsimile of the inscribed text that precisely illustrated the layout of the text on the amulet.
- 20 I use the translation of K. Dosoo, A. Nodar Dominguez, and P. Sarischuli in GEMF 16.
29There are, in fact, two other places where a bilingual Demotic-Greek recipe indents and centers magical names quoted in their original Greek. The first appears in the same formulary (GEMF 16.1079–1085), although it seems that the rubric and instructions of this recipe were lost; it begins with an indented list of three magical words in Greek letters, followed by an un-indented prayer in Demotic that was probably used in a divination spell performed before a lamp:20
ēroubithou
ektoula
ērrephedi
reveal yourself to me, god NN, and speak to me concerning that about which I am asking, in truth without having said to me falsehood.
30Given the lacuna at the start of the recipe, the indented list of names may have been longer. Because the instructions are lost, we have no means of knowing upon what medium the invocation was to be inscribed, for example a papyrus, a wick or the lamp itself.
- 21 For precise directions found in other recipes, see e.g., PGM VII 467–477 (“Take a shell from the (...)
- 22 I use the translation of K. Dosoo, A. Nodar Dominguez, and P. Sarischuli in GEMF 16.
31The second parallel appears in a bilingual recipe for an erotic curse that involves burning (GEMF 15.590–608 = col. xx verso), which stands at the end of a series of recipes used for erotic compulsion. The last of these recipes begins: “Another (i.e., recipe for burning). Cook it [in the(?)] bath”. Here the rubric allo, “another”, directs us to use the same procedure as in the previous recipe (inscribe a papyrus with the names and prayer that follow), but in this case to place it in a hot bath, where the words and the name of the victim will burn up or get very hot and thereby heat up the victim with passion.21 Below these brief instructions, a facsimile of the curse is laid out as follows entirely in Greek:22
allanth …
biraiba …
metira …
emeth[.]e
tharablath
phnouth
thouchara
ōsouchar
sabachar
⟦burn … ⟧
- 23 The request that demon become a “bath-woman” also appears on a 3–4 CE lead curse from Hermoupolis (...)
Burn her, NN, until she comes to me, the man NN, now now, quickly quickly! I adjure you, corpse-daimons, quickly [quickly] … Evil(?) daimon, become a bath-woman,23 (and) burn [her…
32At the top of this curse, we find an even longer list of magical names written in Greek and indented, a list that runs alongside a tall and thin drawing that is now badly abraded and impossible to interpret. The similar endings of the last three names (-chara, -char, -char), suggest that in some cases, the scribes used this format to emphasize the sing-song quality of the similar endings. The image encourages us, moreover, to see that this recipe presents a facsimile for precisely how to arrange the image and the name side by side on the papyrus. And like the gout recipes in GEMF 9 and 16, the prayer that follows is not indented: “Burn her, NN, until she comes to me, NN, now, now, quickly, quickly.” It seems to have been important to the scribe that the names and prayer have different margins, because in line 599 after mistakenly indenting καῦσον (“burn!”), the first word of the prayer, he erased it and then printed it a second time on the following line flush against the left margin.
- 24 This is the translation Raquel Martinez Hernandez from the forthcoming second volume of GEMF.
33Two other recipes suggest, however, that in the fourth century CE Greek scribes preferred to use the technical term plinthion to indicate when magical words were to be laid out in this kind of rectangular form, for example, this recipe for an insomnia-procedure, which instructs us to write on the wings of a bat two sequences of between ten and eleven magical words PGM VII 652–660:24
Write on its right wing: “bôphôr phorbaphorpharba phôrbôrphorba phorba phorba phorba baphaiê phô[rba]phôr barra” and put one word under another one, like a small brick (ἓν ὑπὸ τὸ ἓν [τ]ι[θεὶc ὡc] πλινθίον) and [add the usual, whatever] you want; and on the left wing write this in the same pattern: “phorphôr phorba borphor phorba borphor phorbaphorphor phorbabôr borborba phôrphôrphorba.”
34The inscriptions are very similar to each other in size (64 and 66 letters respectively) and content and although these magical names are themselves written continuously in the recipe, the instructions ἓν ὑπὸ τὸ ἓν ὡς πλινθίον makes it quite clear that they must produce some kind of rectangular shape.
35We find similar instructions on PGM V 304–369, another fourth-century-CE formulary that describes an elaborately designed lead curse-tablet: for the upper part, we are instructed to draw a circle with magical words within and around it. For the part below the circle, we are told to write:
this, too, under the ring as a small brick: “arkhool lailam semesilamph ammophoriōn iōaē pthouth eō phrē, the great spirit, iaō sabaōth arbathiaō lailam osornophri emphrē phrē ptha khrōiō iaō babourē thimanephrē renousi sabaōth barbathiaō thakhra oukheeth esoronōphri.”
36This description suggests that twenty-five or more words were to be placed below of circular design in a square or rectangular shape of the brick, whose precise shape (e.g., tall and narrow?) is not specified. It would seem, therefore, that instead of wasting valuable blank space on a papyrus, as we see in the two second-century-CE recipes in GEMF 9 and 16, scribes of the fourth century CE wrote out these lists in continuous fashion, and simply directed that they be laid out ὡς πλινθίον.
37This technique for inscribing magical names could, moreover, be used for a variety of purposes and on a variety of media:
Text
|
Medium
|
Name(s)
|
Purpose
|
2nd century
|
GEMF 9
|
tin amulet
|
7 lines
|
[sciati]ca?
|
Mid-late 2nd–3rd century (Demotic versions of earlier Greek recipes)
|
GEMF 16.1003–1101
|
tin amulet
|
5 lines
|
gout
|
GEMF 16.1073–1084
|
NA
|
3 lines?
|
divination
|
GEMF 15.590–608
|
papyrus in hot bath
|
9 lines?
|
erotic subjugation
|
4th century
|
PGM V 304–369
|
lead tablet
|
12 lines?
|
restraint
|
PGM VII 652–660
|
on bat wings
|
11 lines
|
insomnia
|
- 25 Heim no. 213, whose text and interpretation I follow.
38This arrangement of names in a plinthion lives on, moreover, after Late Antiquity, as we can see in a recipe for a gout-amulet in a Byzantine collection of veterinarian recipes that tells us to inscribe four names on a foil of tin:25
Πρὸς ποδάγραν. Ταῦτα δ´[= τεσσάρα] ὀνόματα εἰς πέταλον καccιτέρινον γράψεις … τὰ δὲ γραφόμενα ταῦτα: χεντιματε φη κεντεφρα γλυκαiνε
For gout. You will write these four names on a tin lamella … These are the things to be written: xentimate phê kentephra glukaine.
- 26 I closely follow Kotansky (1991), p. 121–123, in the discussion that follows.
39Because it was unusual to write Greek texts with any space between the words, the stipulation that the magical words are “four” in number catches the eye and as does the care the scribe took to separate the words that follow. Although the word division in the surviving manuscript certainly does not yield a convincing rectangle or square, we are encouraged to suppose that these names were originally designed to be written in the form of a block, because a square gold lamella of “Roman date” from Brundisium seems to have been manufactured following these same instructions (GMA 30):26
Brundisium tablet Byzantine Recipe
χεντεμμα χεντιμα
τεφρειχεν τε|φη|κεν
τεφραισ[ τεφρα
βλυ[καινε] γλυκαινε
- 27 The fifth-century medical author, Alexander of Tralles (2.581.22–25) says that if we engrave a si (...)
40Both the recipe and the lamella, then, clearly belong to the same tradition, which produces a squarish text of four magical names without any prayer or any other text at all. The fact that the veterinarian handbook does not divide the words into four nearly equal lengths is not, of course, surprising, given the fact that it has probably been transmitted over the centuries by a series of scribes, many of whom were undoubtedly unfamiliar with such techniques.27
- 28 Faraone (2018), Appendices F–G.
- 29 Bonner (1950), p. 71–75.
- 30 D&D 261–262 and LIM 462.
41With these gout amulets and recipes for them in mind, I suggest that the recipe in GEMF 9 most probably stands at the beginning of a long tradition of inscribing a rectangle or square of magical words on a metal foil that was then attached to the lower legs to cure gout. This suggestion is encouraged by the fragmentary condition of the proposed restoration “Against sciatica” and by the negative argument that papyrus or foil amulets for sciatica are not elsewhere mentioned in the extant Greek or Coptic magical handbooks nor has such an inscribed amulet survived antiquity, at least not to my knowledge. This paucity of textual amulets for sciatica is, moreover, in stark contrast to the abundance of those for gout. In addition to the two recipes discussed above, Marcellus and Alexander of Tralles, record several others for gout amulets (usually manufactured from tendons from the feet and ankles of swift and agile animals), but no examples for sciatica.28 There was, however, a popular tradition of using hematite gems to cure hip disease: these gems carry on their obverse an image of a man bent over with his back parallel to the ground while reaping grain and then the word ⟨ἰ⟩σχίων (“For the hips”) is in most cases inscribed on the reverse of the gem.29 Two of these gems have different inscriptions that further explain the expected benefit: “I work and feel no pain” and “therapy for the hips”.30 It would seem, therefore, that the Greeks had different traditions for treating painful diseases of the leg: hematite gems for sciatica, a disease of the hips, and inscribed rectangular plinthia or animal tendons for gout, a disease of the lower legs, ankles and feet.
42The recipes in GEMF 9 and 16, as well as the those in the early non-gout recipes in GEMF 15 and 16, suggest, finally, that at least in the second century CE Greek scribes used indentation to signal the arrangement of words in a facsimile, whose rectangular shape and dimensions the scribe was supposed to copy on to an amulet or a curse tablet. Such handbook facsimiles, however, seem to have fallen out of favor by the fourth century CE, when we find the technical term plinthion used instead to guide the scribes in producing the correct format.
D&D = A. Delatte, Ph. Derchain, Les Intailles magiques gréco-égyptiennes de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1964.
GEMF = C.A. Faraone, S. Torallas Tovar (eds.), The Greco-Egyptian Magical Formularies vol. 1, Berkeley, 2022.
GMA = R. Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets, vol. 1, Papyrologica Coloniensia 22.1, Opladen, 1994.
Heim = R. Heim, Incantamenta Magica Graeca-Latina, Jahrbücher für classische Philologie Suppl. 10, Leipzig, 1892.
LIM = A. Mastrocinque (ed.), Les Intailles magiques du département des monnaies, médailles et antiques, Paris, 2014.
PGM = K. Preisendanz [and A. Henrichs] (eds.), Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die Griechischen Zauberpapyri 2, 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1973–1974.