Coptic Magical Papyri Podcast

In this episode, Michael Zellmann-Rohrer introduced us to Byzantine magic. Michael Zellmann-Rohrer has an undergraduate degree in classical philology from Harvard University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on late ancient and medieval Greek and Latin magical texts at the University of California. Between 2016 and 2021, he was a research associate on the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names at the University of Oxford. Currently, Michael Zellmann-Rohrer is part of the ERC project "Zodiac - Ancient Astral Science in Transformation", in which he is dealing with a corpus of texts and practices related to his earlier interest in magic. Astrology is another form of easily transmissible folk knowledge with a foundation in religious thought, which has survived on papyri thanks to the favorable climate in Egypt, allowing us to trace the details of its application by practitioners from different social classes. During his research, he has worked with various artifacts of manuscript cultures: Inscriptions on stone, jewelry, amulets made of precious stones and metal leaves, books and formulas on papri, and in parchment and paper codices.

In this episode, the well-known scholar of ancient Mediterranean religion David Frankfurter not only introduces the into the basic questions concerning magic in the ancient world, but also shares his memories of magic studies during their revival in the 1990's. David Frankfurter specializes in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, magical texts, popular religion, and Egypt in the Roman and late antique periods. Frankfurter’s particular interests revolve around theoretical issues like the place of magic in religion, the relationship of religion and violence, the nature of Christianization, and the representation of evil in culture

In this episode of the podcast, we are discussing Coptic pharmacological texts with Anne Grons, who is currently finishing her thesis on the topic. Pharmacological texts offer a window into ancient medical practices. The pharmacological prescriptions are aimed at healing various issues, often by applying remedies made of plants, animals, minerals or other substances, to the body. Coptic pharmacological texts are crucial for understanding Coptic magical prescriptions - often, the boundaries between the two genres are blurred, as they tend to use the same formulations or ingredients. Anne Grons has studied Egyptology and was the assistant/lexicographer at the project Dictionary and Database of Greek Loanwords in Coptic (DDGLC) (Freie Universität Berlin). Currently, she is a researcher at the Institute of the History of Pharmacy and Medicine (in formation) at Philipps-Universität Marburg led by Prof. Dr. Tanja Pommerening. 

Ágnes Mihálykó is a specialist on Christian liturgical papyri. She has recently published a book on the topic, The Christian Liturgical Papyri: An Introduction, with Mohr Siebeck, in which she offered an extensive introduction into the topic, and she discussed the earliest liturgical manuscripts preserved. In the podcast, we discuss the relationship between liturgical papyri and magical texts.

Ágnes spent her undergraduate years studying mostly in Hungary, and obtained her PhD in classics at the University of Oslo in 2017. Currently, Ágnes is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University in Oslo, and she is working on a project in collaboration with the project „Euchologia. Daily Life and Religion: Byzantine Prayer Books as Sources for Social History” lead by Claudia Rapp, at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Ágnes’ project centers around collecting and editing Christian liturgical prayers in ancient Greek and Coptic, which have been preserved on papyrus from the third to the ninth centuries, and which testify to a variety of practices and record the early history of the Coptic Church’s liturgy. Most of them relate to the Eucharist or are intercessions for various occasions, but there are also prayers for the liturgy of the hours, for the ordination of a monk, and blessings as well. The project will bring together these prayers in one corpus as well as in digital publication with a reliable transcription, an English translation and commentary, with reflections on the text’s liturgical function and relation to the intellectual and theological currents of its time.

Edward O.D. Love talks about the development of Egyptian language and script, as the relation between Demotic and Coptic was the focus of his PhD research. Edward thoroughly explains the evolution from hieroglyphics, Hieratic, Demotic, to the Coptic writing, as well as the grammatical progress of the language. A particular focus is put also on the domains of writing and their explanation. Besides these topics, Edward discussed his academic background and his years in Oxford, where he obtained his BA, MSt and PhD.

For the next three podcast episodes, we have decided to bring the project closer to you by interviewing the three core members of the project. In this podcast episode, Korshi Dosoo, the leader of the project, talks not only about the origin of the Coptic Magical Papyri project, but about Coptic magic within the larger framework of the cultural context, as well as about the roots of his own interest in magic in general.

In our third podcast - exceptionally recorded in German -  we sat down with Prof. Sebastian Richter from the Free University of Berlin, to discuss the possible relationship between Coptic magical and alchemical texts. What does alchemy mean in the context of Byzantine and Islamic Egypt? What alchemical processes do the manuscripts professor Richter edited uncover and who wrote them? Listen and enjoy!

In unserem dritten Podcast - ausnahmsweise in deutscher Sprache aufgenommen - haben wir uns mit Prof. Sebastian Richter von der Freien Universität Berlin zusammengesetzt, um die mögliche Beziehung zwischen koptischen magischen und alchemistischen Texten zu diskutieren. Was bedeutet Alchemie im Zusammenhang mit dem byzantinischen und islamischen Ägypten? Welche alchemistischen Prozesse decken die von Professor Richter herausgegebenen Manuskripte auf und wer hat sie geschrieben? Hören Sie zu und genießen Sie!