yr 12 ramesside egypt

1. Ramesside Egypt:
Magic

2. “The distinction between the magical
and the religious is one of definition. The
word magic is often used simply to label
actions, sayings, and ideas that do not
seem reasonable from a Western
positivist or Christina point of view.”
- Herman Te Velde “Funerary Mythology, p. 29”

3. Terminology
•Greek: magikē “art”
• Persian: magush “to have power”
•Middle Egyptian: hekau/heka Coptic: hik
• “smithing the kas (vital essences)”?
• A pun?
• Intensifying prefix h + ka (vital essence)
• Referred to as a god

4. Magic
• Magic was a real and potent force, tangible means of communicating,
manipulating and controlling the gods
• Divine origin
• Gods use it
• For benefit of humanity
• Used for practical and religious purposes
• Magic used for variety of purposes:
• revelation
• healing
• divination, necromancy
• curses
• gain skill, money, sex
• safe passage through afterlife
• Defence against human and spiritual enemies
• wax and clay figures of Seth ritually destroyed

5. Concern Number in Borghouts
Abdominal diseases 1
Vague malign influences
affecting several parts of
the body
1
Blindness 5
Semen of a demon 6
Women’s ailments,
childbearing ailments
11
Protection of children 2
Administration of
medicines
40
Protection against
dangerous animals
12
Protection against
scorpions
8
Protection against
crocodiles
3
Concern Number in Borghouts
Love charms 1
Dangerous or dead
people, the evil eye
5
Night visions 3
Evil influences, death 3
Dangers during
epagomenal days (liminal
period of the year)
9
Specific disease, demons 6
Everyday ailments 2
Haemorrhage 4
Burns 3
Headaches 4

6. P. Leiden/London.
On the recto are a series of spells and recipes arranged in twenty-nine columns written between ruled lines. These include spells f
divination, love spells, poisons and spells of healing. On the verso are apparently discontinuous memoranda, prescriptions and sho
invocations.

7. Ritualists
• Practitioners are called ‘ritualists’
• ‘Priests of Heka’ or ‘Hekau’
• Lector priests
• Jannes and Jambres (Exodus 7)
• Royalty: Khamwaset (son of Ramesses II); Tiye &
Ramesses III
• Folk magic: ‘scorpion charmers’, midwives,
‘protection makers’
• "... there are many varieties of divination to choose
from. There are dream-interpreters, omen-
interpreters, augurs, prophets, Ammon-prophets,
nativity-casters, mages and astrologers.“ - Pseudo-
Callisthenes, Alexander Romance 4
• Collections of spells – Book of Thoth
• Magic prescribed to people

8. Case study: Ramesseum Tomb 5 (MK)

9. Bundle of 118 reed
pens
Box of 17 papyri containing largely magico-medical texts, but
also literary compositions together with an onomasticon,
hymns, and rituals.

10. Masks
• Ritualist “expresses the will of supernatural
powers by impersonating them… ‘I am god X’” –
Borghouts, Ancient Egyptian magical texts p. x

12. Dreams
• Dreams conduit through which the gods could communicate to
humans
• Joseph interprets pharaoh’s dream
• “Incubation” practiced, whereby a person would sleep in a temple in order to
receive prophetic dreams from a god
• ". . .Make a drawing of Besa on your left hand and enveloping your hand in a
strip of black cloth that has been consecrated to Isis (and) lie down to sleep
without speaking a word, even in answer to a question. Wind the remainder
of the cloth around your neck. . .come in this very night.” – P. Brit.Mus. 122
• Bad dreams could be a sign of being the target of a spell

13. Amulets
• "...an object that protects a person from trouble.“ –
Pliny, Natural History 30
• udjaou 'the thing that keeps safe' mekti 'protector'
• used by both the living and the dead, worn on
necklace, found in tombs, wrapped up with mummies
• took the shape of small statues of gods, animals,
objects, body parts, symbols (djed, ankh, Isis knot,
wadjet eye)
• Made from different materials:
• stone, clay, wood, ivory
• different substances had different powers
• magical writing also considered as amulets
• Hydrocephali
• Book of the Dead chapter 162
• Placed underneath the head of the mummy, to warm it