M A G IC IN A N C I E NT E G Y PT Geraldine Pinch British Museum Press © 1994 Geraldine Pinch Published by British Museum Press A division of British Museum Publications 46 Bloomsbury Street, London WCiB 3QQ British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this tide is available from the British Library ISBN O 7141 0979 I Designed by Behram Kapadia Typeset by Create Publishing Services Printed in Great Britain by The Bath Press, Avon COVER Detail of faience plaque showing the protective lion-demon, Bes, c. ist century AD. FRONTISPIECE and BACK COVER One of the giant baboon statues in the area of the ruined temple of Thoth at Hermopolis, I4th century BC. Hermopolis was famous as a centre of magical knowledge. Contents Acknowledgements 7 1 EGYPTIAN MAGIC 9 2 MYTH AND MAGIC 18 3 DEMONS AND SPIRITS 3 3 4 MAGICIANS AND PRIESTS 47 5 WRITTEN MAGIC 61 6 MAGICAL TECHNIQUES 76 7 MAGIC FIGURINES AND STATUES 90 8 AMULETS 104 9 FERTILITY MAGIC 120 10 MEDICINE AND MAGIC 133 11 MAGIC AND THE DEAD 147 12 THE LEGACY OF EGYPTIAN MAGIC 161 Glossary 179 Notes 181 Bibliography 183 Illustration Acknowledgements 18 6 Index 187 Acknowledgements N o general book on Egyptian magic can be written without drawing on the specialised knowledge of many scholars, and most particularly on the work of Professor J. F. Borghouts and his pupils at Leiden. The recent translations of the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri by a group of scholars including H. D. Betz and J. H. Johnson are essential reading for anyone interested in Egyptian magic. I gratefully acknowledge the inspiration provided by a seminar series on Egyptian magic held at Cambridge University in 1991; especially the contributions of John Baines, Janine Bourriau, Mark Collier and John Ray. I am grateful to Dr Stephen Quirke of the Egyptian Antiquities Department of the British Museum for his assistance with the illus- trations to this book and for his helpful comments on the manuscript. I would also like to thank Celia Clear and Carolyn Jones of British Museum Press for their work on the book. I am grateful to the Cambridge University Press and to Graham Fowden and Brian Copenhaver for allowing me to use quotations from their books. I Egyptian Magic E gypt has long been considered a land of mystery and magic. This has led some commentators, ancient and modern, to brand the Egyptians as an irrational, morbid and superstitious race. Pro- fessional Egyptologists prefer to distance themselves from the popular image of Egypt as the source of occult knowledge. They tend to stress the numerous practical achievements of Egyptian civilization and those Egyptian writings that expound a pragmatic and cheerful philosophy of life. This may tip the balance too far. Many of the practices described in this book seem weird, foolish, or even repulsive from the viewpoint of Western rationalism, but if they are ignored our picture of Egyptian society is incomplete. The evidence for ancient Egyptian magic spans about four and a half thousand years. Amulets go back as far as the early fourth millennium BC; while magical texts occur from the late third millennium BC until the fifth century AD. Written spells are the main source material, but objects sometimes provide evidence for types of magic scarcely recorded in the texts. These objects would have been even more useful if all early archaeologists had appreciated the need to record the exact context of their finds. The large number of well-preserved tombs and the sheer quantity of tomb objects on view in museums have ensured that funerary magic has been the subject of much research. Ritual magic performed in temples and everyday magic - the spells and rites enacted for individuals in life - have been studied far less. These three types of magic were closely related and influences passed back and forth between them. The insights that everyday magic can give into the personal lives of the ancient Egyptians make it of far more than marginal interest. The Egyptian word usually translated as 'magic' is heka. This was one of the forces used by the creator deity to make the world. In Egyptian myth, the primeval state was chaos. Before creation there was only a dark, watery abyss known as the Nun. In the Nun existed the great serpent or dragon Apep (Apophis) who embodied the destructive forces of chaos. When the first land, the Primeval Mound, rose out of the Nun, the spirit of the creator had a place in which to take shape. The creator made order out of chaos. This divine order was personified by a goddess called Maat. The word maat also meant justice, truth and harmony. Finally, the creator made deities and humans. MAGIC IN ANCIENT EGYPT 1 Necklace of shell, coral, These deities included the god Heka, who was depicted in human bone, ivory and glazed form, sometimes with the signs that write his name on his head (figs 2, 9, steatite, with hippo- 11). Heka could be identified with the creator himself, particularly when potamus amulet, c. 4000 the latter appeared in child form to symbolize the emergence of new life. BC. This amulet is one of Heka is also described as the ba (the soul or manifestation) of the sun the earliest examples of Egyptian representational god. He was the energy which made creation possible and every act of magic was a continuation of the creative process. 10 EGYPTIAN MAGIC Some Egyptian deities were merely personifications of abstract con- 2 Heka, god of magic cepts or natural phenomena and were never the focus of cult worship or (far left), stands with the goddess Maat behind private devotion. No major temples were built for Heka, but he did have the throne of Osiris. a priesthood and shrines were dedicated to him in Lower (northern) Funerary papyrus of Egypt. There was also a goddess called Weret Hekau 'Great of Magic'. the priestess Originally this was just an epithet, applied to a number of goddesses. As Nesitanebetisheru, a goddess in her own right, Weret Hekau was usually shown in cobra c. 950 BC. form. She was one of the goddesses who acted as a foster-mother to the 3 Magician's wand in the divine kings of ancient Egypt and she was the power immanent in the form of a bronze cobra. royal crowns. The snake-shaped wands used by magicians probably From a Theban burial, 16th century BC. Such represent her (fig. 3). wands may represent the All deities and lesser supernatural beings, including the forces of goddess Weret Hekau, chaos, had their own heka. It was considered as much a part of them as 'the great of magic'. 11
Description: