Faraone, Ch.- Torallas Tovar, S. (eds.), Greek and Egyptian Magical Formularies. Edition, translation and commentary. Vol. I. California Classical Studies, 2022.

The magical formularies on papyrus are precious witnesses to practices and processes of cultural transmission: i.e. the creation, communication, transformation and preservation of knowledge, both in text and image, across history and between the cultures of Egypt and Greece. More than eighty such handbooks survive, some of them in a fragmentary state. Our book, the work of an international team of papyrologists and historians of magic, replaces Papyri graecae magicae edited by K. Preisendanz, which appeared almost a century ago and has been used as one of the most important sources for the study of Greek magic, augmented in the 1990s by the excellent work of R. Daniel and F. Maltomini, the Supplementum Magicum. Our project has collected all the known magical formularies and fully studied both their materiality and their texts.  The facing English translation with notes replaces The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, edited by H.D. Betz.  This volume, the first of two, presents the earliest of the handbooks, fifty-four in all, spanning the period from second century BCE to third century CE, in a new edition which includes the original texts in the three languages (Greek, Demotic, Coptic) with a full material description and a facing translation with commentary.

I cannot add anything, except that it is a great honour and pleasure to be part of this team and to finally see published the first volume of this project, in which I have been part of the editorial team of GEMF 30 (the former PGM VI + II).

Inaugural Lecture of the III International Meeting of Researchers in Religious Sciences 

On 13 October I had the pleasure of opening the III International Meeting of Researchers in Religious Studies, organised by the Association of Young Researchers in Religious Studies (AJICR) at the University Complutense of Madrid, with a lecture on the complex definition of the concept of “magic” in Antiquity.

Continue reading →

Mechanisms of lexical creativity in the divine epiklêsis of PGM

After reading several articles on the hapax of the divine epiklêsis of Greek Magical Papyri (PGM), I realised that there was a question that any researcher addressed: how does this lexical innovation take place? what mechanisms were used to create this specific type of vocabulary? Why are these new terms created? Therefore, this paper explores the ways in which the authors of the practices of Greek Magical Papyri innovate in the lexical field in connection with the creation of new vocabulary to give substance to the qualities of the divine entities invoked.

Paper presented at the International Conference Incantatory Words: Greek and Egyptian Languages in the Magical Papyri, University of Chicago Center of Paris, Paris, 27-28th September 2021

Después de leer varios artículos sobre hapax en la epiklêsis divina de los Papiros Mágicos Griegos (PGM), me di cuenta de que había una pregunta que ningún investigador abordaba: ¿cómo se produce esta innovación léxica? ¿qué mecanismos se utilizaron para crear este tipo específico de vocabulario? ¿Por qué se crean estos nuevos términos? Este trabajo, presentado en el coloquio internacional Incantatory Words: Greek and Egyptian Languages in the Magical Papyri (University of Chicago Center of Paris, París, 27-28 de septiembre de 2021) he explorado las formas en que los autores de las prácticas de los papiros mágicos griegos innovan en el campo léxico en relación con la creación de un vocabulario para dar contenido a las cualidades de las entidades divinas invocadas.

Strategie di adattamento e innovazione nel rituale magico: il caso degli inni

Scholars agree that the so-called Greco-Egyptian magicians made extensive use of various forms of ritual expression also employed in religious rituals, to the extent that, in many respects, Greco-Egyptian magic does not differ from ritual practices considered to be religious. This study aims to explore the exceptional ability of these ritualists to adapt elements of the religious realm to different ritual contexts through the analysis of a particular type of magical logos, the hymn. Specifically, I will focus on the analysis of the strategies and mechanisms that were adopted to make possible the adaptation of a form of expression born from and for a religious context to the multicultural and multi-religious ritual environment of magic. This paper addresses this and other questions linked to the field of the resilience of ritual elements in Late Antiquity, within the panel Dinamiche rituali e strategie di resilienza nella tardoantichità, organised and coordinated by Professor Mariangela Monaca (Università di Messina).

Paper presented at the 18th Annual Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR-IAHR Regional Conference), Pisa (Italy), 30.08– 3.09.2021

Continue reading →

The god Apollo in Greco-Egyptian magical papyri

This paper focuses on Apollo as this divinity is represented in Greco-Egyptian magical texts. This god, thoroughly studied in the religious sphere of the Ancient world, has been scarcely examined in the realm of Greco-Egyptian magic. For this reason, this paper offers a detailed examination of the verbal depictions (invocations) and plastic representations (drawings and statuettes) of Apollo in Greco-Egyptian magical papyri. Special attention will be given to the existence of different compositional layers in the texts, in order to better delineate the portrait(s) of Apollo in this particular ritual setting.

Paper presented at the international conference Calling upon Gods, Offering Bodies. Strategies of Human-Divine Communication in the Roman Empire from Individual Experience to Social Reproduction, hosted by the University of Málaga, 23-25 June 2021, Málaga (Spain).