NOVELA ECUATORIANA

The magical handbook that is today generally known as P. London-Leiden preserves an extensive and varied collection of magical spells, which were grouped together without apparent order. The extant papy-rus measures about5 metres in length and 24 cm in height on average.

Unfortunately, its original length can no longer be determined because

in Petosiris’ tomb in Qaret el-Muzawwaqa (Dachleh oasis),2^ndcentury AD: Ahmed Fakhry, Denkmäler der Oase Dachla (Archäologische Veröffentlichungen des DAIs 28;

Mainz 1982) Plates 26b, 28a, 29b, 33c. The image occurs in Greco-Egyptian style in the central burial chamber of the Kom el-Shuqafa catacombs in Alexandria: Jean-Yves Empereur, Alexandria Rediscovered (London1998) 164.

39 Johnson, ‘The Demotic Magical Spells of Leiden I384’, 48–51.

both beginning and end are lost. It preserves29 columns of text on its recto side and33 short columns on its verso, the sequence of which runs from right to left according to standard Egyptian usage. The London part of the manuscript has columns1–10 on the recto and columns 25–

33 on the verso, whereas the larger Leiden part contains the remaining columns10–29 on the recto and 1–24 on the verso. The columns of the verso are short and tend to cluster in small groups that are randomly distributed along the length of the papyrus roll. They occupy only the top of the page leaving the middle and bottom remarkably empty, which was possibly meant as a precaution against fingers rubbing the text when the scroll is held in the middle of its height at the moment that a person consults the recto side.⁴⁰ At several places of the verso, small scraps of papyrus, occasionally with effaced Greek or Demotic writing, are pasted to the manuscript for reinforcement.⁴¹ Since the Leiden part was pasted between sheets of papier végétal, which turned the papyrus rather dark and shiny, the London part is in a better state of preservation.

Before the scribe started copying the spells he had selected, he drew two horizontal guidelines in black ink along the top and bottom of the manuscript and, until column14, divided the manuscript up into neat squares by drawing vertical borders in black ink at a fairly regular dis-tance.⁴²Despite these preparations, he crossed the guidelines frequently as he copied the spells. The Demotic hand is consistent throughout the manuscript and identical with the Demotic hand of P. Leiden384 verso.

However, the Greek hand differs considerably from the one in P. Leiden 384 verso. The hand is much more careful, avoids ligatures and renders the letters slightly bigger; it is almost like a literary book hand.⁴³ The text is written in black ink with red ink reserved for headings, num-bers, structuring key words that indicate the start of a recipe or

invoca-40 Reuvens, Lettres à M. Letronne,4–5.

41 The scraps with writing that were attached to the Leiden part can be consulted in facsimile in Conrad Leemans, Papyrus égyptien à transcriptions grecques du Musée d’Antiquités des Pays-Bas à Leide (Description raisonnée I383) 2 vols. (Leiden 1839) plate 14, nrs. 1–2 and 4–7.

42 From column15 onwards the vertical borders are generally missing, although they reappear between columns27 and 28 and between columns 28 and 29. The horizontal guidelines are missing for the columns24 to 26.

43 Note that the hand of the Greek invocation of column4/9–19 [PGM XIVa.1–11]

differs slightly in appearance from the Greek invocations of 15/25–28 [PGM XIVb.12–

15] and 23/9–20 [PGM XIVc.16–27].

tion,⁴⁴ and verse points.⁴⁵ Although the verse points were carefully copied onto T. Hooiberg’s facsimile of 1839 and Herbert Thompson’s hand copy of 1921, they never attracted scholarly attention despite the fact that their function within the manuscript is far from self-evident.

Their presence is remarkable, since the application of verse points seems to be a rather marginal phenomenon in Demotic texts,⁴⁶in con-trast to their abundant appearance in hieratic texts of the pharaonic period.⁴⁷Moreover, they are applied in the invocations, which are poet-ically structured to some degree, as well as in the rather mundane and straightforward recipe-like prescriptions to the rituals.⁴⁸It is noteworthy that they occur only on the recto and are not even consistently applied there.⁴⁹

The base language of the manuscript is Demotic, but at three occa-sions a short invocation in Greek is inserted between the Demotic lines of a recipe. In another case, a spell is said to be in Nubian and spelled in alphabetic Demotic signs. The Demotic script shows an intricate mixing with hieratic signs, while complete words or word groups in hieratic are frequently incorporated within Demotic clauses. The voces

44 These key words are

¯dd mdw.t, ‘words to recite’, or pA #ˇs nty-"ı-"ır--^{k #ˇs}--f, ‘the spell that you have to recite’, at the start of an invocation, and pAy--f sw.h-"ıj¯h, ‘its gathering of things / preparation’ at the start of a recipe.

45 Verse points or Gliederungspunkte are dots in red ink set at regular intervals above the line. They are attested in Egyptian manuscripts since the 12^th dynasty and were probably used as a device to structure a text in semantic units, since they always appear at the end of a (subordinate) clause. They appear mainly in texts of a poetic nature, although not exclusively. Since a number of texts are provided with verse points in one manuscript and lack verse points in the other, it has been suggested that verse points were used only by students. This is however very unlikely in the light of the avail-able evidence. The exact meaning and function of the verse points remain therefore a matter of debate. See: Günter Burkard, ‘Der formale Aufbau altägyptischer Literatur-werke: Zur Problematik der Erschliessung seiner Grundstrukturen’ SAK 10 (1983), 79–

118 and Nikolaus Tacke, Verspunkte als Gliederungsmittel in ramessidischen Schülerhandschriften (SAGA22; Heidelberg 2001) 146–171.

46 The only presently known example is The Harpist’s Song. In the extant version of this composition each verse line is split up in two units by two dots in red above the line; see: Heinz-J. Thissen, Der verkommene Harfenspieler. Eine altägyptische Invektive (P. Wien KM3877) (Demotische Studien 11; Sommerhausen 1992).

47 Verse points are particularly common in literary and didactic texts of the New Kingdom.

48 This phenomenon occurs at times also in magical texts of the New Kingdom; for example, P. BM EA9997+10309, P. BM EA 10042 (Harris Magical Papyrus), P. Turin CG1966, 1993, 1995, 1996, P. Chester Beatty VII.

49 The verse points are only applied in columns1, 2, 3 (lines 1–20), 5 (lines 3–24), 6, 7, 8 (lines 1–11), 12 (lines 15–18), 14, 15 (lines 1–20), 16, 17, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29 (lines 6–16).

magicae are spelled in alphabetic Demotic signs and, in the majority of cases, provided with glosses written in Old-Coptic, a script that consists of the Greek alphabet and a few additional Demotic signs to render sounds that the Greek alphabet does not provide.⁵⁰ Several sections of the manuscript contain a fair number of words written in an encrypted script, generally referred to as ‘cipher’, which is otherwise unattested outside the Demotic magical papyri.⁵¹ Two sets of another encrypted script are found on the verso side written within a rectangular frame of three thin lines in black ink (fig.2.6–7).⁵² It is evident that both sets encrypt the Greek alphabet, because the first set contains the corre-sponding Greek letter above each sign as a transcription key and the second set consists of24 signs, the total number of signs of the Greek alphabet. Except for four random signs, neither of these sets contains encrypted signs that are used in the spells, so that it remains a mystery to what aim they were written on the backside of the manuscript.⁵³

50 See on the development of the Coptic language and script out of ancient Egyp-tian: Daniel R. McBride, ‘The Development of Coptic: Late-Pagan Language of Syn-thesis in Egypt’ JSSEA19 (1989) 89–111; Jan Quaegebeur, ‘De la préhistoire de l’écriture copte’ OLP13 (1982) 125–136; David Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt. Assimilation and Resistance (Princeton1998) 248–256.

51 P. Leiden384 verso contains one word in cipher (IV/2) and P. Louvre 3229 one as well (2/25). This is very meagre when compared with the 93 words in cipher of P. London-Leiden.

52 The frame with the set of signs is located in the middle of the page under the verso columns1 and 2. Strangely enough, it is written at right angles in relation to the Demotic columns at the top of the page. See for a facsimile of this text: Leemans, Papyrus égyptien à transcriptions grecques, plate14, nr. 3. The signs are also treated in Jean Doresse, ‘Cryptographie copte et cryptographie grecque’ Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte33 (1952) 115–129, 224 and table III.

53 For these four signs, see, Griffith, Thompson, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, vol.3, 108.

Fig.2.9. Facsimile of two ‘cipher’ alphabets, Leemans nr. 3

The extant collection of spells is clearly the result of one or several phases of compilation and editing. In two cases a recipe refers to an invocation that is actually not given in the manuscript and must therefore, in all likelihood, have been forgotten in the course of editing and copying the texts.⁵⁴In a few cases complete sections recur slightly changed in different spells demonstrating that spells were recycled and adapted at a certain moment during the phase of compilation and editing.⁵⁵Editorial comments like ‘otherwise said’ (ky

¯dd) and ‘according to another manuscript’ (ky

¯dm#) followed by alternative words or phrases occur regularly and are evenly distributed over the texts. They reveal that the copyist made use of several older manuscripts that could differ from each other in wording and prescribed ingredients. In one case, a recipe does not give the words of a prayer, but merely refers to it by giving its title in a mix of Demotic and hieratic: ‘You have to recite the writings of Adoring Re in the Morning at his Rising’ (6/3; PDM xiv 153).

The manuscript contains 98 spells in total, of which 5 are merely short lists and descriptions of plants, minerals and a salamander. The

54 In22/1–5 [PDM xiv.670–674] a powerful spell is recommended without the spell being given. After line5 the column is empty as if the copyist initially meant to include the spell but forgot about it. A prescription for a lamp divination [PDM xiv.805–840]

orders the practitioner to recite ‘this spell in Greek’ (27/35) without giving the Greek spell.

55 Clear examples are1/13–16 = V27/1–8 [PDM xiv 12–17 = 1172–1179]; 5/11–20 = 7/8–15 = 17/1–7 [PDM xiv 127–137 = 194–204 = 489–499]; 10/22–35 = 27/1–12 [PDM xiv295–306 = 805–816]. The fancy hieroglyphs of column 5 recur in columns 6 and 27.

thematic scope of the recipes is varied, although spells for vessel or lamp divination clearly dominate. Other topics are love spells (both attraction and separation), dream sending, spells for charm and success and medicinal recipes for bites of poisonous animals, eye diseases and gout. An overview of the spells can be found in Appendix2.2 to this chapter.