Magica Levantina: An edition of mainly unpublished Greek magical inscriptions from the late ancient Levant, with a web portal containing photographic, desriptive and textual documentation of the objects
Classical, Roman, Christian and Islamic Archaeology
Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
Final Report Abstract
The project Magica Levantina has aimed at the edition of 35 largely unpublished, mainly Greek magical texts from the Late-Antique Levant inscribed on metal. The accompanying Magica Levantina Web Portal, developed in collaboration with the Cologne Center for the eHumanities (University of Cologne), will document the texts photographically, textually and descriptively. Images created by Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) are the signal feature of the photographic documentation. The Website will make the RTI images easily available to the public. The RTI images are far superior to conventional digital photography, primarily because they make it possible to easily view under high magnification words and individual letters of the palaeographically difficult writing under light from various different angles simply by manipulating the mouse. The Website is one of the highlights of the Magica Levantina project. The contents of the Vol. 1 include 21 hitherto unpublished Greek curse tablets found in a well at the Governor’s Palace in Caesarea Maritima during excavations conducted by Barbara Burrell and Kathy Gleason in 1994 and housed in the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA); a reedition of the curse tablet from Caesarea Maritima from the Hendler Collection in Israel; 12 Greek curse tablets and an Aramaic one, all from the excavations at Syrian Antioch and Daphne directed by Princeton University in the 1930; and a Greek amulet on silver now in the IAA. The find from the Governor’s Palace contains a curse to prevent a slave from running away, another against a pantomime dancer, a juristic curse, and 18 curses aimed at horses and charioteers that raced in the circus. The Hendler tablet seems to have been commissioned by a prostitute in order to maintain the loyalty of three clients. The curses from Antioch and Daphne include 5 circus curses from the Antioch’s hippodrome, and 7 curses aimed at individuals. The silver amulet is of interest not only because it was designed to prevent the recurrence of epilepsy in a woman, but also because of its tiny letters of 1 mm height. Here a few highlights: The new texts occasionally shed light on their archaeological and socio-economic contexts. The widely varied religiosity of the new material reflects mainly Orphism, Judaism, and Egyptian religion. Materia magica has been found with some of the curses: human hair and, for the first time, caterpillar remains and sage, both probably used for wordmagic. The two obscurantist examples of “slander magic” Antioch are fascinating. The crocodile gods mentioned in No. 2 from Caesarea in the 4th/5th cent. AD might be one of the pieces of evidence that the Ptolemies had attempted to introduce the Egyptian crocodile cult (connected with the royal cult) into the region when it was under their control in the 3rd cent. BC. The many new curses against horses and charioteers shed new light on the institution of the ancient circus in the East and contain about 150 new names of horses. The Aramaic circus curses No. 31 is the only curse know to have been written in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic. The new material contains a wealth of magical names, words, signs, word-designs, and drawings.
Publications
- “A Curse Tablet from the Eastern Circus at Caerarea,” ‘Atiqot 92 (2018), pp. 167–174
R. Daniel and Y. Porath
- “Curse Inscribed on Lead, 3–5 c. AD,” no. 3830 in Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae, IV Iudaea/Iudumaea, edited by W. Ameling, H. Cotton, W. Eck et al. (Berlin 2018), pp. 1324–26
R. Daniel
