Two Body Problems: Binding Effigies in Christian Egypt and Elsewhere (original) (raw)
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Figurines, Images, and Representations Used in Ritual Practices
In the early 1970's, the Musée du Louvre purchased a small, unbaked mud figurine, a clay vessel, and a lead tablet that was said to be from Egypt (Illustration 18.1).1 The object depicts a woman on her knees, with her arms and hands twisted behind her back. Thirteen iron pins pierce the clay figurine at significant points in its anatomy-the scalp, the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the chest or heart, the pudenda, the soles of the feet, the hands and the anus. The tablet that accompanied the figurine records a complicated spell to force a woman named Ptolemais to love Sarapammon. The publication of this remarkable object by P. du Bourget, conservator of the Départment des Antiquités égyptiennes, soon followed in 1975; the inscription on the tablet was published the following year by S. Kambitsis.2 This figurine was modeled with attention to specific anatomical and portraitlike features, including hairstyle and jewelry. Scholarly interest and debate has raged over the object because of its similarity to a set of spell instructions preserved in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris, (P. Bib. Nat. Supp. gr. no. 574 = PGM IV 296-466), a text dated to the fourth or fifth century ce.3 Ancient ritual 1 I would like to thank my research students at Oberlin College, including Gabriel Baker ('07), Ploy Keener ('08), Christopher Motz ('08), and Eush Tayco ('08) for their assistance in preparing this manuscript. Two colleagues, Andaleeb Banta, Curator of Western Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, and Matthew Rarey, Assistant Professor of Art History, provided guidance as I thought about the role and function of representation in art. I am indebted to the editors, David Frankfurter and Henk Versnel, for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I also wish to recognize the Thomas F. Cooper Fund for Classics Faculty Research at Oberlin College, which provided extensive support for acquiring the images that illustrate this essay.
The Relationship between Magical Symbols and Daily Life in Greco-Roman Egypt
The scientific journal of the Faculty of Tourism and Hotels- Alexandria University (JFTH), 2021
Everything in daily life of ancient Egyptians associated with magic for example, shapes, papyrus, gods, childhood etc. Ancient Egyptians used different concepts of magic such as HQA, Hri-tp. The idea of magic had a long history in ancient Egypt with the relationship between religion and magic in ancient Egypt. It can be analyzed historically and philosophically. In ancient Egypt magic was practiced as legitimated and part of religious worship. Magic was seen a powerful force that worked with the gods and protection. The aim of magic was to divine the future and give power to the deceased. Magic was conceived differently in different ancient Mediterranean societies such as in Greco Roman Egypt. This paper provided a general review to the practice of magic in ancient Egypt. Magic in ancient Egypt can be characterized as an impersonal force that is available for the use of both gods and men. Magic offered a means of communication with the gods and the cosmos as a whole and to influence the desired outcome of an obstacle.
Ritual Art: a Key to the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 1996
The Bambara sculpture is a ritual object, in fact one of the dramatis personae of a ritual drama. The Civara, as it is called, is carried on the head during the ritual dance as a token of the presence of the mythical antilope which brought agriculture to the Bambara. Besides the male Civara there is also a female one, and in their dance, the two of them dramatize the fertilizing interaction of sun and soil. Without further exploring Bambara ritual, we may notice that a piece of pictorial art is here an integral part of a ritual. It is a mask, carried during the dance and designating its bearer as the mythical antilope. Also belonging to a ritual are the space and the surroundings in which it is carried out. It is well known how ritual places and temple rooms are often structured and decorated to make out the background and the framework of ritual acts. The place of ritual may be designed as an imago mundi, or it may be chosen or named according to mythical prototypes. Temple rooms m...
The so-called ‘healing’ statues form a relatively small but well-studied category of monuments attested chiefly from between the 26th Dynasty and early Ptolemaic Period. They represent men of elite status, generally shown in a standing pose supporting a Horus cippus. Scholarly attention has tended to focus on the magico-medical texts of the statues, rather than the function and perception of the statues in context. The visual impact of the densely-inscribed statues, when viewed in temple spaces amidst other more traditional elite statue types, is likely to have been significant. Such a departure from the ‘norm’ is seen in New Kingdom chauves d’Hathor statues, where the peculiarity of the sculptural form was a means of attracting attention. ‘Appeal to the living’ texts on the healing statues make clear that the intended audience for the statues was among temple staff. Claims made in the statues’ inscriptions to ‘save everyone’ are part of an age-old rhetoric to persuade passers-by to offer to the deceased; in contrast to modern, egalitarian expectations about access to healthcare, those with physical and intellectual access to the statues are likely to have been restricted to a knowledgeable few, rather than a broader ‘public’ proposed by many commentators.
Addenda to 'Miraculous Bodies', 2012: Cross-marked ancient statuary [UPDATED JUNE 2016]
Some addenda to a catalogue of cross-marked Greek and Roman sculpture that I published in 2012: ’Miraculous Bodies: Christian Viewers and the Transformation of ’Pagan’ Sculpture in Late Antiquity’, in S. Birk & B. Poulsen (eds.) Patrons and Viewers in Late Antiquity (Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity vol. 10), 31-66, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2012.
Изкуствоведски четения [Art Readings] , 2024
This paper analyzes a faithful copy of a 6 th /7 th-century amulet which exemplifies the parallel use of multiple distinct varieties of religious imagery within a single art work. The amulet combines a detailed Christological cycle, engraved on the one side, with a representation of a winged creature, standing on two crocodiles, on the other, derived from images of Horus, an ancient Egyptian god. Such an intriguing combination of religious imagery taken from distinct cultural contexts testifies to the survival and integration of earlier beliefs in early Byzantine Egypt and to the various strategies employed by worshippers in the hope of reaching out to several divine forces at once.
Embodied Images: Christian Destruction and Response in Late Antique Egypt (2009)
Journal of Late Antiquity 2.2 (2009), 224-250
The Christian destruction of pagan images in Late Antiquity frequently has been regarded as a mindless aspect of religious intolerance. A closer study of the phenomenon, as observed through the extant historical and archaeological sources from Egypt, however, suggests a more complex modus operandi in Christian responses to pagan images that is furthermore revelatory of contemporary conceptions of religious imagery. This study argues that Christian responses are best understood through a particular conception of embodied images, that is, that they possessed qualities of the human body. In spite of Christian authors claiming otherwise, bodies in stone were linked to flesh and blood bodies through the destructive practices that were undertaken to counteract the powers believed to dwell in pagan images. These practices included burning and selective destruction of body parts to negate the bodily qualities of an image. The responses of Christian image-breakers in Egypt are interpreted here with reference to both contemporary methods of punishment (of human bodies) and older traditions of visual practices particularly pertinent to Egyptian culture.