{"id":50821,"date":"2025-03-14T17:21:52","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T16:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/?p=50821"},"modified":"2025-03-16T11:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-03-16T10:36:10","slug":"animals-in-coptic-magic-iii-animal-transformation-in-christian-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/2025\/03\/14\/animals-in-coptic-magic-iii-animal-transformation-in-christian-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Animals in Coptic Magic III: Animal Transformation in Christian Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Odysseus’ men being transformed into pigs by Circe on a lekythos from 5th century BCE Greece (Athens, National Museum, no. 9685) Source<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In this post we will begin a small subseries within the larger subject of animals in Coptic magic, to look at the theme of animal transformation. In this first part we will discuss this theme in Christian narrative literature from Egypt, while the next posts will look at real magical practice \u2013 animal transformation as a metaphor in love and hate spells, and the illusionistic transformation of the practices known as \u201clamp experiments\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The transformation of humans or human-like beings into animals is a regular theme in literature from around the world, including in Pharaonic Egypt and Classical Greece, two of the cultures which lie behind that of Late Antique Egypt. In the New Kingdom Contendings of Horus and Seth<\/em> the two gods transform into hippopotamuses to fight underwater, while in Homer\u2019s Odyssey <\/em>we find the famous story of Circe, the divine witch who transforms visitors to her island into pigs and other animals with drugs and the touch of her wand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The examples we will look at here are similar to those found in the story of Circe \u2013 human beings transformed by hostile magic into animals, usually horses or donkeys. One of the earliest and best known of these stories is found in the Lausiac History <\/em>(17.6) by the Bishop Palladius, written around the year 420 CE, in which he recites the stories of various early monks, among them the legendary holy man known as Macarius of Egypt, or Macarius the Great. Palladius recounts the story of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

A certain Egyptian [who was], enamoured of a lady married to a husband, and being unable to seduce her, consulted a sorcerer, saying, \u201cLead her to love me, or contrive that her husband reject her,\u201d And the sorcerer having received a sufficient sum, used sorcerous spells and arranged for her to take the form of a mare. The husband, having come in and seen her, was surprised that a mare lay on his bed. He weeps and laments; he talks to the animal, but gets no reply. He calls in the priests of the village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He brings them in, shows her to them, but does not discover what has happened. During three days she neither took fodder as a mare nor bread as a human being, thus deprived of both forms of nourishment. Finally\u2026 it entered into her husband’s heart to take her into the desert\u2026 the brethren stood by the cell of Macarius, struggling with the woman’s husband and saying, \u201cWhy did you bring this mare here?\u201d. \u2026 The husband answered them: “She was my wife and was turned into a mare, and today is the third day that she has tasted nothing.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They referred the matter to the saint, who was praying within, for God had revealed the matter to him and he was praying for her. The holy Macarius therefore answered the brethren and said to them, \u201cYou are horses, since you have the eyes of horses. For she is a woman and has not been transformed, except in the eyes of deluded men.\u201d And he blessed water, and pouring it from the head downwards on to her bare skin, he prayed. And immediately he made her appear to all as a woman. Then, giving her food, he made her eat and sent her away with her husband thanking the Lord. And he advised her thus, \u201cNever give up the church, never stay away from the communion. For these things happened to you because you did not attend the mysteries for five weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There is another version of this story in the slightly earlier History of the Monks in Egypt<\/em>, which has the same broad details, but some minor differences \u2013 in this other account, the woman is a consecrated virgin, the man casts the spell himself rather than consulting a magician, and it is the girl\u2019s parents who take her to Macarius, who heals her in a slightly longer ritual involving isolating her in a cell for seven days before anointing her with oil. Nonetheless, there are several interesting points which are clearer in Palladius\u2019 text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the text reveals an important element of the official Christian discourse about magic. Magic can only create illusions \u2013 the woman is not really a horse, and it is only in the eyes of those less perceptive than Saint Macarius that she seems to be. When Macarius undoes the magic, he does not really transform her back from horse into woman, but only removes the illusion. Secondly, the woman can only be affected by the magic because of her own flaws \u2013 she has not been attending church regularly as she should have been, and so had lost divine protection. Christians in Late Antiquity were expected to attend church twice a day \u2013 morning and evening \u2013 and to take eucharist twice a week, on Saturday night and Sunday morning. But it seems that many found this too onerous and did not do so; literary texts like this often warn them that in failing to carry out this obligation, they were leaving themselves open to sorcerous attacks. This may also explain why she is unable to eat either human or horse food \u2013 bread or fodder; she is not really a horse, and so cannot eat hay, but she, like the other lesser Christians, has been tricked into seeing herself as a horse, and so believes that she cannot eat bread. The Coptic version of the Lausiac History, <\/em>adds a further detail \u2013 Macarius instructs the woman to avoid eating meat after being saved, since that was a pleasure of the flesh which would permit the Devil, and the powers of the magicians who served him, to enter into her own flesh. <\/p>\n\n\n

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A clay model of a horse from Egypt (Brooklyn Museum 36.169; V-VI CE) Source<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The big question, though, is why turning a woman into a horse would make sense in the context of a love spell. In the next blog post we will explore the widespread ancient idea that horses were lustful animals, and so turning a woman into a horse might be a way of making her more willing to mate, but this does not seem to be the idea in this text. Instead, Palladius implies that the goal was to have the husband reject her. If she was turned into a mare, perhaps the husband would not realise that she was his wife, or would give up turning her back into a woman, and either sell her or set her free, a kind of divorce which would allow her other admirer to get sexual access to her, presumably after turning her back into a human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This implicit idea is found in a later story almost certainly based on the older legend, found in the Arabic-language History of the Patriarchs, <\/em>a history of the Coptic Church told through the lens of its patriarchs. It tells us that during the patriarchate of Michael I (r. 744-768 CE):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u2026 there was a magician who took a maiden, and turned her into a donkey by his wicked arts in the presence of all who saw her. And she remained with him three years, as she related. And when he took her out into the desert, he made her a woman, that she might serve him, and he might commit sin with her. But when he entered the city, he rode upon her, as if she were a donkey. Then, on the seventh of Abib, the feast of the holy Shenoute, the excellent prophet, the aged Abba Paul (the Bishop of Akhmim) met that man, when she was with him, and took her from him, though none knew of her except the accursed misbelieving magician. And Abba Paul took the magician, and gave him up to the governor, who caused him to be burnt in the fire after he had been put to death. Then the bishop loosed the woman from the bonds of Satan and delivered her to the superior of the convent of nuns.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here the implicit becomes explicit; the woman is transformed into an animal in order to cut her off from normal human society, and turn her into a beast of burden so that the magician can ride her; he has picked a woman as his victim so that he can transform her back into her original form and abuse her when they are alone in the desert. Again, it is a holy man, Apa Paul, who rescues her from this miserable state of affairs; his discernment is able to recognise that the donkey is really a woman, rescue her, and hand the magician over to the governor to be punished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We might think that these are stories told purely for entertainment, but we should be hesitant to do so; accounts of the miraculous deeds of saints were often used in literary texts to make particular arguments, here to teach their readers and listeners to trust in holy men, to go to church regularly, and so on, and to do so they relied on the events they told having a believability, or at least resonance, for their audience. In his City of God <\/em>(18.18), written around 426, the North African bishop Augustine of Hippo recounts that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Indeed we ourselves, when in Italy, heard such things about a certain region where there were landladies of inns, imbued with these wicked arts (of magic, who) were said to be in the habit of giving to such travellers as they chose, or could manage, something in a piece of cheese by which they were changed on the spot into beasts of burden, and carried whatever was necessary, and were restored to their own form when the work was done. Yet their mind did not become bestial, but remained rational and human, just as Apuleius, in the books he wrote with the title of The Golden Ass<\/em>, has told, or feigned, that it happened to his own self that, on taking poison, he became an ass, while retaining his human mind.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here Augustine tells us that the idea of magical transformation into beasts of burden was a real fear for travellers, who were worried that they might be turned into a beast of burden and forced to work. He evokes what is probably the most famous story of this type, The Golden Ass <\/em>of Apuleius of Madaura (c. 124\u2013after 170 CE), which was in turn based on an older work. In it, the hero accidentally transforms himself into a donkey while unwisely experimenting with the magic salves in a witch\u2019s workshop. He then has a series of misadventures \u2013 being forced to work for various cruel masters \u2013 before being rescued by the intervention of the goddess Isis. Keith Bradley has noted that Apuleius\u2019 story can be seen as a kind of metaphor or imaginative exploration of slavery \u2013 the way that enslaved humans are reduced to the status of animals. This is the process referred to by scholars of slavery as \u201canimalisation\u201d, which, in the words of Bradley, \u201coffered the prospect of converting human beings to a state of mute and unquestioning docility and obedience in which there were virtually no limits to the demands of work, punishment, and disposal that might be made of them, and in which the slaves\u2019 ability to exercise their will and make independent decisions might be completely destroyed\u201d. Indeed, the hero of The<\/em> Golden Ass <\/em>often describes himself as a slave, and the humans he works alongside as his \u201cfellow slaves\u201d, while the way in which the transformed donkey is falls suddenly from a relatively privileged life of wealth to one of hard labour would reflect the experiences of many people in the ancient world who were suddenly enslaved by bandits or pirates; we could understand Augustine\u2019s story as a kind of supernatural expression of this fear of the dangers of travelling. By the same token, the stories about women transformed into animals tell us something about the fears and desires which surrounded women in Egypt \u2013 the desire of some men to turn them into animal-like slaves, and the fears of women and their guardians that they might attract the dangerous attention of men outside the family who might seek to abuse them. Against these, the stories promise that regular church attendance, and the intervention of holy men, were the best recourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A mosaic of a donkey being offered food, from Constantinople (Great Palace Mosaic Museum; VI-VII CE) Source<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a postscript, let us look at a different version of the theme, recorded by the Czech scholar Werner Vycichl sometime between 1934 and 1937. In his travels he would often find himself listening to the folk stories told by Coptic laymen at night gatherings. Many of these were about Sim\u02bf\u0101n al-Dar\u0101wi (\u201cSimon of Daraw\u201d), a legendary Coptic magician said to have lived 100 years earlier. In one story he heard, Vycichl records that Sim\u02bf\u0101n worked as a schoolmaster who:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u2026taught the Coptic children to read and write. However, the Muslims also had a school in the same alley and a faq\u012bh<\/em> (jurist) taught there, who bitterly hated the Copts. Every day he incited his pupils to beat the Coptic children. When they kept coming to Sim\u02bf\u0101n in tears and complaining to him, he took it upon himself to go to the faq\u012bh<\/em>. But the faq\u012bh<\/em> insulted him and mocked him and incited his students to beat the Coptic children even more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Sim\u02bf\u0101n saw that the faq\u012bh<\/em> could not be dealt with by kindness he tried his hand at magic. He took a palm rod and gave it magical powers by muttering magical charms over it. Then he asked the children at his school, who had been watching his actions attentively, \u201cWhich of you is ready?\u201d One pupil answered, \u201cI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sim\u02bf\u0101n gave him the palm rod and told him to wait outside the faq\u012bh<\/em>\u2019s door. When he stepped out of the door, he was to touch him with the palm rod and bring him. The boy did as he was told. When the faq\u012bh<\/em> stepped out of the door, he touched him with the palm rod and suddenly a strange change happened to him: his ears grew long and his body became covered with hair and before the boy knew it, a donkey was standing in front of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boy grabbed the halter and brought the donkey to Sim\u02bf\u0101n. He was delighted when he saw the faq\u012bh<\/em> in the form of a donkey and said, \u201cYou’ve come at the perfect time! I’m just about to build a new house and you’re going to carry the bricks for me!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is customary in Egypt, he then loaded a double basket onto the donkey, which hung down to the right and left of the back, filled it with bricks and took them to the building site. This went on for six weeks until all the bricks were in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the donkey looked very emaciated, sad and battered. Sim\u02bf\u0101n saw no more use for him and thought of giving him back his human form. He touched him with the palm rod, muttered his spell and in an instant the faq\u012bh<\/em> was back. However, because he had been carrying bricks for six weeks, he looked just as skinny and battered as the donkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sim\u02bf\u0101n wanted to annoy the faq\u012bh<\/em> and feigned deep sympathy: \u201cOh, where have you been, ya \u1e25ab\u012bb\u012b <\/em>(\u201cmy friend\u201d)?\u201d But the faq\u012bh<\/em> knew very well that Sim\u02bf\u0101n had cast a spell on him and swore his revenge. But first he went home, where he had to stay in bed for days to recover from the strain of the spell.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps we can discuss the faq\u012bh<\/em>\u2019s revenge in a future post, but for now we can note that this telling is both like and unlike the others: as in the earlier versions, Sim\u02bf\u0101n\u2019s transformation of the faq\u012bh <\/em>serves to enslave him, reducing him to the status of a miserable prisoner who must perform hard, body-breaking labour. The tone, though, is very different; Sim\u02bf\u0101n is not a sinister outsider, but rather a kind of hero, who uses his magic to punish a cruel neighbour; if magic isn\u2019t harmless, it is both humorous, and a potential tool of justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Bradley, Keith. \u201cAnimalizing the Slave: The Truth of Fiction\u201d, Journal of Roman Studies<\/em> 90 (2000) 110\u2013125.
A discussion of the theme of slavery in the context of the Golden Ass.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cha\u00eene, Marius. \u201cLa double recension de l\u2019histoire Lausiaque dans la version copte\u201d, Revue de l\u2019Orient Chr\u00e9tien<\/em> 25 (1927) 232\u2013275.
The Coptic version of the<\/em> Lausiac History.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davis, David Brion, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World,<\/em> Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.
A general discussion of the phenomenon of slavery, focusing on the Americas, but with a discussion of \u2018animalisation\u2019 on p. 28\u201347.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dods, Marcus. \u201cAugustine of Hippo: The City of God\u201d, from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series<\/em>, Vol. 2. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight, online at http:\/\/www.newadvent.org\/fathers\/120118.htm<\/a>
Translation of the City of God used here.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dosoo, Korshi. \u201cCirce\u2019s Ram: Animals in Greek Magic\u201d, in Animals in Ancient Greek Religion, edited by Julia Kindt. London: Routledge (2020) 260\u2013288.
A discussion of animals in Graeco-Roman magic.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dosoo, Korshi. 2022e. \u201cSuffering Doe and Sleeping Serpent: Animals in Christian Magical Texts from Late Roman and Early Islamic Egypt\u201d, in Korshi Dosoo and Jean-Charles Coulon (eds.), Magikon Z\u014don: Animal et magie dans l\u2019Antiquit\u00e9 et au Moyen \u00c2ge | Animal and Magic from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.<\/em> Paris-Orl\u00e9ans: Institut de recherche et d\u2019histoire des textes (2022) 495\u2013544, online at https:\/\/books.openedition.org\/irht\/757?lang=en<\/a>
A discussion of animals in Coptic and Greek magic from Christian Egypt.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evetts, B. History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria. Part 3: Agathon-Michael I (766 AD), Paris, Firmin-Didot et Cie., 1910.
An edition of the Arabic History of the Patriarchs; the story quoted above may be found on pages 205\u2013206.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frankfurter, David. 2001. \u201cThe Perils of Love: Magic and Countermagic in Coptic Egypt\u201d, Journal of the History of Sexuality 10.3\/4, 480\u2013500.
A discussion of the themes of animal transformation and love magic in Late Antiquity, including a discussion of the stories of Macarius the Great discussed above.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gilhus, Ingvild S\u00e6lid, Animals, Gods and Humans. Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas, London and New York, Routledge, 2006.
A helpful discussion of the role of animals in Early Christianity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vycichl, Werner. 1952. \u201cKoptische Zaubergeschichten”. Der Zyklus von Sim\u02bf\u0101n al-Dar\u0101wi, dem koptischen Dr. Faust\u201d, Le Mus\u00e9on 65, 291\u2013301.
An account of stories of magic told by Copts in the 1930s. The episode cited above is presented on pages 294\u2013296.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarke, W.K. Lowther. The Lausiac History of Palladius<\/em>. London: Macmillan Company, 1918. 
The source of the translation of the Lausiac history used here is found on pages 74\u201376.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this post we will begin a small subseries within the larger subject of animals in Coptic magic, to look at the theme of animal transformation. In this first part we will discuss this theme in Christian narrative literature from Egypt, while the next posts will look at real magical practice \u2013 animal transformation as a metaphor in love and hate spells, and the illusionistic transformation of the practices known as \u201clamp experiments\u201d.  The transformation of humans or human-like beings into animals is a regular theme in literature from around the world, including in Pharaonic Egypt and Classical Greece, two of the cultures which lie behind that of Late Antique Egypt. In the New Kingdom Contendings of Horus and Seth the two gods transform into hippopotamuses to fight underwater, while in Homer\u2019s Odyssey we find the famous story of Circe, the divine witch who transforms visitors to her island into pigs and other animals with drugs and the touch of her wand.  The examples we will look at here are similar to those found in the story of Circe \u2013 human beings transformed by hostile magic into animals, usually horses or donkeys. One of the earliest and best known of these stories is found in the Lausiac History (17.6) by the Bishop Palladius, written around the year 420 CE, in which he recites the stories of various early monks, among them the legendary holy man known as Macarius of Egypt, or Macarius the Great. Palladius recounts the story of: A certain Egyptian [who was], enamoured of a lady married to a husband, and being unable to seduce her, consulted a sorcerer, saying, \u201cLead her to love me, or contrive that her husband reject her,\u201d And the sorcerer having received a sufficient sum, used sorcerous spells and arranged for her to take the form of a mare. The husband, having come in and seen her, was surprised that a mare lay on his bed. He weeps and laments; he talks to the animal, but gets no reply. He calls in the priests of the village. He brings them in, shows her to them, but does not discover what has happened. During three days she neither took fodder as a mare nor bread as a human being, thus deprived of both forms of nourishment. Finally\u2026 it entered into her husband’s heart to take her into the desert\u2026 the brethren stood by the cell of Macarius, struggling with the woman’s husband and saying, \u201cWhy did you bring this mare here?\u201d. \u2026 The husband answered them: “She was my wife and was turned into a mare, and today is the third day that she has tasted nothing.”  They referred the matter to the saint, who was praying within, for God had revealed the matter to him and he was praying for her. The holy Macarius therefore answered the brethren and said to them, \u201cYou are horses, since you have the eyes of horses. For she is a woman and has not been transformed, except in the eyes of deluded men.\u201d And he blessed water, and pouring it from the head downwards on to her bare skin, he prayed. And immediately he made her appear to all as a woman. Then, giving her food, he made her eat and sent her away with her husband thanking the Lord. And he advised her thus, \u201cNever give up the church, never stay away from the communion. For these things happened to you because you did not attend the mysteries for five weeks.\u201d There is another version of this story in the slightly earlier History of the Monks in Egypt, which has the same broad details, but some minor differences \u2013 in this other account, the woman is a consecrated virgin, the man casts the spell himself rather than consulting a magician, and it is the girl\u2019s parents who take her to Macarius, who heals her in a slightly longer ritual involving isolating her in a cell for seven days before anointing her with oil. Nonetheless, there are several interesting points which are clearer in Palladius\u2019 text. First, the text reveals an important element of the official Christian discourse about magic. Magic can only create illusions \u2013 the woman is not really a horse, and it is only in the eyes of those less perceptive than Saint Macarius that she seems to be. When Macarius undoes the magic, he does not really transform her back from horse into woman, but only removes the illusion. Secondly, the woman can only be affected by the magic because of her own flaws \u2013 she has not been attending church regularly as she should have been, and so had lost divine protection. Christians in Late Antiquity were expected to attend church twice a day \u2013 morning and evening \u2013 and to take eucharist twice a week, on Saturday night and Sunday morning. But it seems that many found this too onerous and did not do so; literary texts like this often warn them that in failing to carry out this obligation, they were leaving themselves open to sorcerous attacks. This may also explain why she is unable to eat either human or horse food \u2013 bread or fodder; she is not really a horse, and so cannot eat hay, but she, like the other lesser Christians, has been tricked into seeing herself as a horse, and so believes that she cannot eat bread. The Coptic version of the Lausiac History, adds a further detail \u2013 Macarius instructs the woman to avoid eating meat after being saved, since that was a pleasure of the flesh which would permit the Devil, and the powers of the magicians who served him, to enter into her own flesh.  The big question, though, is why turning a woman into a horse would make sense in the context of a love spell. In the next blog post we will explore the widespread ancient idea that horses were lustful animals, and so turning a woman into a horse might be a way of making her more willing to mate, but this does not seem to be the idea in this text. Instead, Palladius implies that the goal was to have the husband reject her. If she was turned into a mare, perhaps the husband would not realise that she was his wife, or would give up turning her back into a woman, and either sell her or set her free, a kind of divorce which would allow her other admirer to get sexual access to her, presumably after turning her back into a human. This implicit idea is found in a later story almost certainly based on the older legend, found in the Arabic-language History of the Patriarchs, a history of the Coptic Church told through the lens of its patriarchs. It tells us that during the patriarchate of Michael I (r. 744-768 CE): \u2026 there was a magician who took a maiden, and turned her into a donkey by his wicked arts in the presence of all who saw her. And she remained with him three years, as she related. And when he took her out into the desert, he made her a woman, that she might serve him, and he might commit sin with her. But when he entered the city, he rode upon her, as if she were a donkey. Then, on the seventh of Abib, the feast of the holy Shenoute, the excellent prophet, the aged Abba Paul (the Bishop of Akhmim) met that man, when she was with him, and took her from him, though none knew of her except the accursed misbelieving magician. And Abba Paul took the magician, and gave him up to the governor, who caused him to be burnt in the fire after he had been put to death. Then the bishop loosed the woman from the bonds of Satan and delivered her to the superior of the convent of nuns. Here the implicit becomes explicit; the woman is transformed into an animal in order to cut her off from normal human society, and turn her into a beast of burden so that the magician can ride her; he has picked a woman as his victim so that he can transform her back into her original form and abuse her when they are alone in the desert. Again, it is a holy man, Apa Paul, who rescues her from this miserable state of affairs; his discernment is able to recognise that the donkey is really a woman, rescue her, and hand the magician over to the governor to be punished. We might think that these are stories told purely for entertainment, but we should be hesitant to do so; accounts of the miraculous deeds of saints were often used in literary texts to make particular arguments, here to teach their readers and listeners to trust in holy men, to go to church regularly, and so on, and to do so they relied on the events they told having a believability, or at least resonance, for their audience. In his City of God (18.18), written around 426, the North African bishop Augustine of Hippo recounts that: Indeed we ourselves, when in Italy, heard such things about a certain region where there were landladies of inns, imbued with these wicked arts (of magic, who) were said to be in the habit of giving to such travellers as they chose, or could manage, something in a piece of cheese by which they were changed on the spot into beasts of burden, and carried whatever was necessary, and were restored to their own form when the work was done. Yet their mind did not become bestial, but remained rational and human, just as Apuleius, in the books he wrote with the title of The Golden Ass, has told, or feigned, that it happened to his own self that, on taking poison, he became an ass, while retaining his human mind. Here Augustine tells us that the idea of magical transformation into beasts of burden was a real fear for travellers, who were worried that they might be turned into a beast of burden and forced to work. He evokes what is probably the most famous story of this type, The Golden Ass of Apuleius of Madaura (c. 124\u2013after 170 CE), which was in turn based on an older work. In it, the hero accidentally transforms himself into a donkey while unwisely experimenting with the magic salves in a witch\u2019s workshop. He then has a series of misadventures \u2013 being forced to work for various cruel masters \u2013 before being rescued by the intervention of the goddess Isis. Keith Bradley has noted that Apuleius\u2019 story can be seen as a kind of metaphor or imaginative exploration of slavery \u2013 the way that enslaved humans are reduced to the status of animals. This is the process referred to by scholars of slavery as \u201canimalisation\u201d, which, in the words of Bradley, \u201coffered the prospect of converting human beings to a state of mute and unquestioning docility and obedience in which there were virtually no limits to the demands of work, punishment, and disposal that might be made of them, and in which the slaves\u2019 ability to exercise their will and make independent decisions might be completely destroyed\u201d. Indeed, the hero of The Golden Ass often describes himself as a slave, and the humans he works alongside as his \u201cfellow slaves\u201d, while the way in which the transformed donkey is falls suddenly from a relatively privileged life of wealth to one of hard labour would reflect the experiences of many people in the ancient world who were suddenly enslaved by bandits or pirates; we could understand Augustine\u2019s story as a kind of supernatural expression of this fear of the dangers of travelling. By the same token, the stories about women transformed into animals tell us something about the fears and desires which surrounded women in Egypt \u2013 the desire of some men to turn them into animal-like slaves,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[315],"tags":[316,115,8,318],"class_list":["post-50821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals-in-coptic-magic","tag-animals","tag-augustine","tag-coptic-magic","tag-macarius"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pat5PQ-ddH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50821"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52438,"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50821\/revisions\/52438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}