MAGIC IN GRECO-ROMAN EGYPT: THE SEMIOTICS OF A GRADUAL INTERPENETRATION OF EGYPTIAN AND GREEK RITUAL BELIEFS

Abstract

When Ptolemy I seized Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great, he established a dynasty and a Greek-speaking administration of the country of the Pharaohs that was to last for almost three hundred years.A cross-cultural overlap started gradually to take place: some Alexandrian scholars became interested in Egyptian religion and magic, while some Egyptian priests learned to speak and write Greek.The aim of this paper is to examine the function of the sacred notion, belief and prāxis of the Egyptian magic (heka) within this environment of cultural overlap. It will be shown that heka followed the old tradition, incorporated into new patterns. New prominence was given to ritual magic in the decoration of the Ptolemaic temples which proves a solid performative bond between magic and religion in full format. The apotropaic formulae featured in Late Period documents were established in their Pharaonic precedents: the identification of the magician with a deity ("divine speech"), the attribution of the members of the human body to those of specific gods ("lists"), the invocation of deities by their secret names ("words of power") and the use of traditional magical formulae. The gradual derogation of the Egyptian notion of magic under the influence of the rationalism of the Ancient Greek will be shown brielly in the corpus of Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri, which were produced between the 2nd century BCand the 5 century AD.