This week’s post takes a deep dive into another healing amulet from Kyprianos, our database of Coptic magical texts. P. Vienna K 08638, now housed in the collection of the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, is a small rectangular sheet of parchment, 8.5cm in height and 6.8cm in width. The recto (front) of the sheet was filled with an applied text, whose 13 lines covered the surface, with the name of its client written upon it. With three clear vertical creases and perhaps five horizontal creases, the sheet was perhaps folded from the outside in, leaving all of its outer edges folded within a neat parcel of about 2cm by 2.5cm. This…
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Coptic Amulets III: Take fever away from Thōthphe, the son of Giōrōgia!
This week’s post takes a deep dive into another example of a healing amulet from Kyprianos, our database of Coptic magical texts: Vienna, Nationalbibliothek K 08637 is a sheet of parchment, cut into a rough rectangle measuring 10cm by 8cm. 7 or 8 horizontal creases suggest that this sheet was folded multiple times, or rolled and then squashed. The text’s eight lines of text and two lines of characters (magical signs) were inscribed upon the flesh side of the parchment, the inward-facing side of the skin, while the hair side, which would have faced outwards, was left blank. This parchment was edited by Viktor Stegemann in 1934, but since then…