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 Magical Papyri on the Road: Colloque GIS Religions, Lyon (8-10 October 2019)
From the 8th to the 10th October 2019, GIS Religions: pratiques, textes, pouvoirs (“Scientific Interest Group, Religions: Practices, Texts, Powers”) organised a conference in Lyon focusing on the theme of “tradition”, a key concept in past and present understandings of, and debates about, religion and religious practices. Within this large conference, two panels focused on the theme of “magic”, and its relationship to tradition. Organised by Nicole Belayche (EPHE, PSL / AnHiMA) and Thomas Galoppin (ERC MAP Toulouse, ERASME / associé AnHiMA), the first panel was centered on the questions of the transmission of ritual knowledge, and how this served to establish or claim authority, while the second explored the…