Thesiss

This thesis examines the Solomonic grimoire manuscripts between 1400-1800. Grimoires, as books of magic materials, claim an ancient lineage from the time of King Solomon of Israel. Modern scholarship has attempted to argue either for or against such a claim, but has not adequate…

This dissertation examines the ritual use of scriptural incipits (i.e., opening lines of biblical books and texts) on apotropaic devices (e.g., amulets) from late antique Egypt. There are three primary objectives of this study. First, I develop a typology of the scriptural incip…

Two major approaches have been used to study magic in the ancient world. Essentialist approaches have attempted to determine the nature of magic and relate it to science and religion. Functionalist approaches have attempted to determine how magic and accusations of magic functio…

Scholarship often characterizes magic in derogatory terms or defines it as illegitimate, in opposition to the positive, socially acceptable forms of religion. This dichotomy is not valid for ancient Israel. The diversity of sources represented in the Hebrew Bible attests to a va…

This study examines a select group of ritual texts from Graeco-Roman Egypt designated as invisibility spells (P.Oxy. inv. 3931; P.Berol. inv. 5025.222–31, 247–62; P.Lond. inv. 121.620–2; P.Lugd.Bat. inv. J 395 [W] 234–7, 267–9, 270–7). As part of the larger corpus of magical lit…

The subject of this dissertation is a corpus of 203 Bronze Age anthropomorphic figurines recovered from various archaeological contexts at Umm el-Marra, Syria. Anthropomorphic figurines are an important subject of study because they are common in the archaeological record and ye…

This dissertation constitutes a comprehensive review and analysis of incantations of West Semitic provenience, extra-biblical and biblical, from the second and first millennia B.C.E. Recent discoveries and publications of texts from Syria-Palestine have furnished an ancient samp…

The Magician in Medieval German Literature is an exploration of a number of issues related to magic and learning in vernacular German fiction from the Middle Ages. A close reading of medieval German narratives reveals that since magic was labeled demonic and unchristian by early…

During the ancient Roman period, individuals across the Empire practiced magic and employed magicians for numerous reasons, including cursing a litigator and attracting a lover. Ancient practitioners intoned spells and manipulated objects in the enactment of their craft. My diss…

Found wandering the Grymm Forest at age five and raised by a roving band of gypsies, 17-year-old Eurydice and her chatty sidekick Harly—a scholar turned mule—navigate the criminal underbelly of the Twin Kingdom as assassins for justice. In the opening, Eurydice's loyalty to just…

This work argues that the presence of "alchemical" and "magical" material found in papyri dated to the third or fourth century CE must be related to the declining local aristocracy of the Roman empire and to their educated clients. Jacco Dieleman, Ian Moyer and mostly David Fran…

In ancient Egypt, sexuality, fertility, and the conception of children was of central importance not just to personal identity, but also to family and social structure. Because of the significance of birth in both the physical world and in the spiritual realm, references to repr…

In Late Antique Rome the worship of the sun penetrated into Christian belief and practice. This is usually explained in terms of a type of syncretism, where the sun god in Roman religion during this time (often seen as being at the apex of the pantheon) was conflated with the Ch…

Historically, being accused of witchcraft meant death (Baker, 2015; Demos, 2008; Ehrenreich & English, 2010). More recently, identifying as a witch means living with a stigmatized and often concealed identity (Reece, 2016; Tejeda, 2015). Despite the injurious effects of stigmati…

The current methods for identifying what is “magical” and distinguishing it from what is “religious” have hitherto been relatively vague and inconsistent within the academic field.1 In order to identify more clearly these two categories, which have been heavily entrenched within…

Offerings is an investigation of my relationship between faith, craft, and place. Through artist’s books, handmade paper, tools, and sculptural works, I explore my environment and create a space for questioning the traditional lines of science, magic, religion, and the roots of …

This project examines the prevalence of acclamation formulas inscribed on late Roman amulets. It argues that acclamations in amuletic form were believed to have the power to protect due to the powers that people in late antiquity attributed to actual acclamatory performance. Cro…

Although the practice of “magic” and the activity of demons were major topics of interest to early Christian thinkers, the terms and concepts that scholars use to engage this material has remained ill-defined. Early scholarship generally classified the belief in "magic” and “dem…

The life of Joshua Gordon and his intellectual product, Witchcraft Book (1784) gives access to the backcountry of South Carolina. Witchcraft Book is exemplary of syncretism in the Atlantic world, influenced by multiple European traditions, understandings of science in the early …

During archaeological excavations over the last century, fifty-seven separate coin deposits have been found in ancient synagogues from Late Antique Palestine and the Diaspora. This project provides an overview of these deposits, the buildings they were discovered in, and the spe…