We’ve just posted our latest update to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects. There are two major changes with this update. The first is that we have decided to make available the raw data behind Kyprianos in the form of CSV files, in order to allow other users to explore the data more readily. The files for the Manuscripts and Texts tables may be downloaded from the Database Help page (“About the Kyprianos Database”). These files can be opened with most text editing and spreadsheet or database programs, and will allow the database to be reconstructed, searched, and statistics generated, without the need to use the online version.…
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Kyprianos Update (10 July 2022)
We’ve just posted our latest update to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects. The update includes: 36 new manuscript entries, bringing the total to 1059. These contain new Greek, Coptic, Demotic, and Aramaic manuscripts from Egypt and elsewhere dating to the first millennium CE. We are particularly grateful to Anne Sieberichs, who is currently responsible for entering manuscripts from a checklist of Aramaic incantation bowls prepared by Ortal-Paz Saar. We have also made several important corrections to previously uploaded entries. 28 new text entries, bringing the total to 206. These include: Two texts from P. Heid. Inv. Copt. 685 (M186), including the longest Coptic version of the famous Prayer of Mary…
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Kyprianos Update (16 February 2022)
We’ve just posted our first update of the year to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects. The update includes: 12 new manuscript entries, bringing the total to 1023. These contain Greek and/or Coptic magical and liturgical texts from Egypt and other parts of the Roman Empire, including four new Coptic copies of the Jesus-Abgar correspondence (information kindly provided by Roxanne Bélanger-Sarrazin), and seven new Greek texts edited by Michael Zellmann-Rohrer, six of which are from the new volume of the Oxyrhynchus papyri. 9 new text entries, bringing the total to 178. Two texts from the codex P. Heid. Inv. 685, an exorcism of a female demon and a pair of…
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Kyprianos Update (22 December 2021)
We’ve just posted our latest update to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects. The update includes: 24 new manuscript entries, bringing the total to 1012. These contain Greek and/or Coptic magical and liturgical texts from Egypt and other parts of the Roman Empire, as well as Aramaic incantation bowls from the Prosopographic Database of Magical Bowls produced by Ortal-Paz Saar. 2 new text entries, bringing the total to 169. The two texts we chose for this update are P. Heid. Inv. Kopt. 685 p. 10 ll. 1-18, the instructions for creating an amulet empowered by Nassklnē, a being who protected King Solomon. P. Palau Rib. Inv. 412R, an amulet for protecting…
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Kyprianos Update (11 October 2021)
We’ve just posted our latest update to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects. The update includes: 15 new manuscript entries, bringing the total to 958. These contain primarily Greek and/or Coptic magical texts from Egypt. 9 new text entries, bringing the total to 165. Among the texts we’ve chosen for this update are… Rossi’s Gnostic Tractate, a long, now-lost magical prayer, and one of the first-published Coptic magical texts, accompanied by an image of an angel shown here on the right. Louvre E 14.250, a highly-illustrated separation curse written on a piece of parchment shaped like a knife. Vienna K 10335, a short and mysterious text containing the magical names…
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Kyprianos Update (1 July 2021)
We’ve just posted our latest update to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects. As well as correcting some small mistakes in manuscript, text, and archive entries, the biggest change is that the texts entries now contains a field for tracings of the magical images and diagrams (called tableaux) which accompany them. You can see an example on the right, taken from F1908.45.12, a strange papyrus with no legible text, perhaps some kind of amulet. There are 19 tracings in the current update, and we’ll continue to add them to new texts with each forthcoming update. The update includes: 10 new manuscript entries, bringing the total to 921. These contain…
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Kyprianos Update (30 April 2021)
We’ve just posted our latest update to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects. As well as correcting some small mistakes in manuscript, text, and archive entries, the update includes: 10 new manuscript entries, bringing the total to 889. These contain primarily Greek and/or Coptic magical texts from Egypt. 26 new text entries, bringing the total to 88. Among the texts we’ve chosen for this update are… the remaining curses and love spells from Cairo JdE 42573, a paper codex from the 10th or 11th century… three recipes from a fragmentary magico-medical text, for treating a woman suffering from uterine bleeding, a crying child, and swelling; the last recipe seems to…
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Kyprianos Update (24 March 2021)
We’ve just posted our second 2021 update to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects. As well as correcting some small mistakes in manuscript, text, and archive entries, the update includes: 39 new manuscript entries, bringing the total to 879. These are primarily Greek and/or Coptic magical texts from Egypt. 23 new text entries, bringing the total to 62. Among the fascinating texts we’ve chosen for this update are… a strange set of curses from a paper codex from the 10th or 11th century never before published in English translation… a copy of the exorcistic prayer attributed to the Virgin Mary known as ‘Mary in Bartos’ (also never before published in…
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Kyprianos Update (22 December 2020)
We’ve just posted our third and last update to the Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts and Objects for 2020. As well as correcting some small mistakes in manuscript and text entries, the update includes: 47 new manuscript entries, bringing the total to 795. The database now includes all entries for the Greek magical texts from Supplementum Magicum (SM), published by Robert Daniel and Franco Maltomini. The manuscripts table now also contains links to the database To Zodion, directed by Raquel Martín Hernández, and containing copies and descriptions of drawings from magical texts. 5 new edited texts, bringing the total to 27. These include: …the three texts of P. Mil.…