• Podcast

    Podcast #10: Greek and Egyptian deities in Coptic magical texts with Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin

    In this podcast episode, we are discussing Greek and Egyptian deities appearing in Coptic magical texts, which are predominantly Christian. How is it possible that one encounters Artemis and Jesus in the very same text (BNF Suppl. Grec. 1340)? And Isis and Horus in many others at the time when Christianity was predominant in Egypt? Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin, our guest for this podcast episode, helps us to understand how such mixing of various traditions was possible and what shape this tendency took. Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin defended a thesis on this topic, appearing later this year as part of the Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta series (Peeters). Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin has obtained a…

  • News

    Coptic Magical Papyri on the Road: Letters, Archives and Communication in Late Antiquity Heidelberg Conference

    Rodney Ast and Loreleï Vanderheyden of the sub-project of SFB 933, A02 “Antique Letters as a Means of Communication,” organized a hybrid conference in Heidelberg on the 8th and 9th of November 2021 focused on letters, archives, and communication in Late Antiquity. As Rodney Ast remarked in his introduction to the conference, there has been an increasing focus in recent years on the appreciation of texts as physical products of communities organized around the cultures of writing. Materiality and text culture was thus the main focus of this conference on letters. Jean-Luc Fournet was the keynote speaker at the conference; he spoke about the private letters of Graeco-Roman Egypt, emphasizing…