| Archive name: | Coptic Wizard’s Hoard |
Trismegistos Archive ID: 
Page on the database Trismegistos Collections for the archive. |
|
| Date:
Dates are CE unless preceded by a minus sign <->, in which case they are BCE. |
401 – 700 |
| Provenance: | Egypt |
| Trismegistos Place ID:
Page on the database Trismegistos Places for the place of provenance. |
|
| Manuscripts: | KYP M9 15 16 17 18 20 |
| Classification: | These manuscripts may comprise an “archive”, meaning that they were brought together and deposited by an ancient person or persons. |
| Description: | Six papyrus manuscripts containing overlapping content. |
| Acquisition: | Acquired by Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge in 1921 (Worrell 1930: p. 239). |
| Dating: | All the manuscripts have been dated palaeographically to between the sixth and seventh centuries, although P. Mich. Inv. 593 may be slightly earlier, as early as the fifth century (see individual manuscript entries for full details). |
| Language/dialect: | All the texts are written in Sahidic Coptic. |
| Materiality/composition: | All of the manuscripts are written on papyrus. P. Mich. Inv. 593 (M9) is in the form of a codex, P. Mich. Inv. 602 (M18) is a rotulus, and M15 is a series of sheets comparable to an unbound codex composed of single differently-shaped folios. The remaining manuscripts are sheets. |
| Content: | Worrell divided their contents into three texts (A-C) contained in several manuscripts; only text A (P. Mich. Inv. 593 =M9; 599 + 594 + 603 + 596 = M15) is edited to date. Text B is contained in M15 (P. Mich. 598 + 597 + 595 Ro = M15) and P. Mich. Inv. 600 (M16) + 601 (M17) + 602 (M18). Text C is contained in P. Mich. 595 vo (M15). All of the texts are magical, with the exception of a wine account copied in P. Mich. Ing. 602 (M18) ll. 23-27. |
| Discussion: | The contents of this archive are very complex, and difficult to summarise given their incompletely published state. M15 seems to be a large manuscript containing all the texts contained on the other manuscript, copied from and/or used to copy out the other exemplars. |
| Bibliography: |
Meyer, Marvin W., and Richard Smith. Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. Princeton (New Jersey): Princeton University Press, 1999, p. 304–310, no. 133. |
| Edit History: | KD (29/9/2020); EL (29/9/2020); KD (23/11/2020) |
How to cite:
[Editor names]. "KYP A10: Coptic Wizard’s Hoard," Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects, Korshi Dosoo, Markéta Preininger, & Roxanne Bélanger Sarrazin (principal editors), www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de/index.php/archive/kyp-a10. Accessed on 24/07/2026.For the "editor names", see the abbreviated names in the field "Edit History", and to resolve the abbreviations, see the help page.