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• Las Gemas Uterinas y la Terapéutica de las Piedras en la Obra de Oribasio de Pérgamo

  95–105.

  Mercedes López Pérez

  Views:

  306

  Uterine gems belong to a group of amulets, usually engraved on red minerals, such as jasper and carnelian; the most used is the hematite or “blood stone”. The iconography of the uterus in these gems refers to the mobility of the uterus, an idea already present in Plato's Timaeus (Pl., Ti. 91c.), and in the Greco-Roman medical texts, the wandering uterus theory. In this work we will complete the analysis of uterine gems with the use of stones as a therapeutic in the work of Oribasio de Pérgamo.

• Gagates: A Magical Gemstone

  95–104

  Attilio Mastrocinque

  Views:

  321

  The jet stone was used for amulets from antiquity to modern times. Legends and beliefs concerning it flourished. It is black and, being similar to amber, could be burned to obtain a smoke used for magical and medical purposes. Some religious ceremonies used it for attracting snakes. It was often confused with other stones, such as aetites and serpentine and even with agate because it was also called antachates.

• Magic in the Cosmopolis of Rome

  71–97.

  Richard Gordon

  Views:

  1

  Using examples from anthropological studies of radical shifts in the imaginaire of magic in modern African and Asian societies, this paper outlines the consequences both for small time ritual practitioners themselves and for the stereotypes of a specifically urban magic that followed the decision to move to the megacity of Rome, taken as emblematic of the case with other large cities in the ancient Mediterranean world. Given the highly dispersed nature of religious authority in the Greek and Roman political formations, and the attraction of religious entrepreneurship in hierarchically-organised societies with very limited social mobility, the religious field of larger conurbations was characterised by competition for social and religious capital between official and unofficial ritual practitioners, whereby the former were in a position to dominate the relevant discourse in their own interests. This domination produced new accusations of misuse of religious symbols associated with specifically urban magic, focused on the manipulation of emotions, child-snatching, and the use of human body-parts for nefarious ends. Historically, however, the major significance of the transition from the rural to the complex urban world was increased competition between practitioners, leading to innovation in methods and media, above all in the production of new types of protective amulet, and recourse to textuality.

• A Protecting Curse

  125–129

  György Németh

  Views:

  317

  The maskelli maskello spell was mostly used to increase the effectiveness of curses on curse tablets and in recipes of magic papyri. Curiously, the incantation appears in the texts of three amulets, one of them on a magic gem preserved in Leiden.

• Characters and magic signs in the Picatrix and other Medieval magic texts

  69–77

  Benedek Láng

  Views:

  615

  The word „characters” covers a number of different phenomena in the Middle Ages. It might refer to a list of incomprehensible signs and astrological symbols inscribed in a talismanic sigil, to a series of Latin letters used for magical purposes, and also to a written form of verbal incantation, a written charm. Characters were often used in the field of talismanic or celestial magic in order to name spiritual beings. The paper reviews the use of characters in various medieval sources: textual amulets, necromantic manuals, texts on talismanic magic and the most famous medieval magical summary, the Picatrix.

• To a beautiful soul. Inscriptions on lead mirrors (Collection of Roman Antiquities, Hungarian National Museum)

  101–113

  György Németh

  Ádám Szabó

  Views:

  313

  There is a collection of several hundred small Roman lead mirrors (former private collection) in the Hungarian National Museum. Greek or Latin inscriptions can be read on 17 mirrors. The present study publishes these items along with the drawings of the inscriptions. Such mirrors were found mainly in graves of women, functioning as escorts to the souls of the dead and as apotropaic amulets.

• Parallel Phrases and Interaction in Greek and Latin Magical Texts.: The Pannonian Set of Curse Tablets

  27-36

  Andrea Barta

  Views:

  482

  Magical texts represent an inexhaustible source for the phenomena of an ancient language for special purposes. The scope of this paper is limited to the different kinds of word-borrowings in the Pannonian set of curse tablets. One-language, well written and easily readable magical texts can be difficult to understand while explicit and unambiguous wording is expected in such practical genre like curses which level at definite persons. Harmful curse tablets and protective amulets, however, can be obscure. This study aims to give a comprehensive account of the possible reasons why these texts have a cloudy style, with special outlook of parallel phrases in Greek pieces of evidence.

• Materiality, Oral Incantations and Supernatural Agency in Ancient Healing Magic

  15–42.

  Francisco Marco Simón

  Views:

  684

  In the Ancient World illness was thought to be the effect not of accidental or natural causes, but rather the result of a negative agency, an external attack on the victim’s body. This paper focuses on the diverse strategies used in healing magic attested in the material and textual records from the ancient Near East to Late Antiquity, with special attention paid to how the cultural status of objects and substances was changed through ritual, a process that, along with the invocations of demons and gods, allowed objects to acquire agency to counterattack the harm inflicted on the victim’s body.