Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts - Translating and Interpreting ancient Egyptian practices for healing and protection

MZAW-Research Seminar for doctoral students and advanced students

by Prof. Dr. Rita Lucarelli (Berkeley)

4-8 July 2022, 14 ─17 pm
An interdisciplinary masterclass for doctoral students and advanced students of all ancient studies. Working language is English. (The course can be credited with 3 ECTS points.)

 

Ancient Egyptian written magic is central for our understanding of the ancient Egyptian religion and even more of its mortuary beliefs and practices. From the first printed edition of a manuscript of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead in 1842 (Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter nach dem hieroglyphischen Papyrus in Turin mit einem Vorworte zum ersten Male Herausgegeben) to the most recent digitization of incantations for the living and the dead (see, among others, the magical texts available in transliteration and translation on the website of the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae), our comprehension of the ancient Egyptian magical texts and of their function has been progressing throughout the last centuries.
This masterclass aims at providing an overview of the main corpora and traditions of ancient Egyptian magical texts through their reading (in translation) and commentary and according to a comparative approach. The ancient Egyptian sources on magic will be compared with other magical traditions of civilizations that have been historically connected to ancient Egypt, such as Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome. The primary sources used during the masterclass will be texts on healing, protection for the dead, demons, and divination. In addition, amulets and other magical objects inscribed with magical texts will be discussed within a discourse on the materiality of magic.
General topics will be covered as well, such as how the ancient Egyptians defined magic in relation to religion and science, and the application of digital tools to the study of the ancient Egyptian magical texts. The main goal of the masterclass is learning how the ancient Egyptian system of magical knowledge and belief is internally coherent and how it mirrors its society’s religious and learned traditions, from the Pharaonic throughout the Greek and Roman periods.

Monday, July 4th
- Defining ancient Egyptian magic: religion, science and worldmaking
- Texts vs material culture in magical practices

Tuesday, July 5th
- Funerary texts and the protection of the dead
- Spells of the gates and guardians of the netherworld

Wednesday, July 6th
- Agents of punishment in magical texts
- Magical texts for the living

Thursday, July 7th
- Magical texts and objects at the Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst München

Friday, July 8th
- Magic in 3D: a roundtable on the application of Digital Humanities and photogrammetry to the study of magical objects and texts (with guest speakers from LMU)

The number of participants on site is limited to 20. If you like to participate, please apply by 10 June at the latest with an approx. one-page letter of motivation and a short CV (pdf or word) at: c.veit@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

We look forward to your participation!