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• A gold lamella for ‘Blessed’ Abalala

  7–20

  Roy D. Kotansky

  Views:

  88

  This article examines a previously unpublished gold lamella of unknown provenance, datable on palaeographical grounds to the 1st century BCE, give-or-take a half century, either side. The tablet preserves three words written in Greek letters that may contain a GrecoPersian formula of protection in the afterlife for its bearer, Abalala, a name of pre-Islamic extraction. The study compares the formula with those on a number of shorter ‘Orphic’ gold lamellae to show that the tiny piece represents a ‘Totenpaß’ for the beneficent dead, rather than a protective charm (phylactery) with the usual voces magicae, although the distinction between magic words and meaningful text is not always clear in such instances.

• A Coptic magical name in a Pannonian phylacterion

  79–88

  Bence Fehér

  Views:

  98

  A silver lamella was found in Aquincum (1927/28), in a burial site which could be easily dated to the latest Trajan or early Hadrian era, but it was published defectively, misread and misinterpreted. Several attempts at re-interpretation in the 1990s and 2000s succeeded only partially. The reading I propose contains distinct textual units beginning with characters (among them hieroglyphs), and a Coptic magical logos (παχνουφις). In my opinion, the phylacterion was meant to give protection in the next world, and the writer of the spell was well acquainted with the Egyptian magical traditions.