Fellowship Report
During my six-month senior fellowship at the DFG Centre for Advanced Studies MagEIA at the University of Würzburg, from 1 April to 30 September 2026, I made substantial progress on several research projects. The main outputs are outlined below.
1. Research outputs
- I completed a paper entitled “The Logos to Be Spoken and the Logos to Be Written: Orality, Writing, and Ritual Efficacy in Graeco-Egyptian Formularies.” The paper will form part of a collective volume that I am co-editing, provisionally entitled “The Interplay of Orality and Literacy in Ancient Religions.” It examines the respective functions of speaking and writing in the recipes contained in ritual formularies from Roman Egypt.
- I drafted the introduction to the aforementioned collective volume on the interplay of orality and literacy in ancient Religions.
- I wrote a paper entitled “Authority through Efficacy: Divinatory Recipes in the Graeco-Egyptian Ritual Formularies,” which is about to appear in a collective volume edited by Kim Beerden and Rafał Matuszewski and published by Brill within the series “Religions in the Graeco-Roman World.” The volume addresses how authority was established in divinatory practices in antiquity and is the result of a conference on the same topic held at the University of Potsdam in December 2025. My paper analyses the specific case of divinatory recipes in the so-called magical papyri from Roman Egypt.
- I completed a paper entitled “Between Prayer and Offering: The Votive Logic of Ancient Curses”, which will appear in a collective volume edited by Susanne Luther, Markus Lau, and Michael Hölscher. The volume emerges from the conference “Not lehrt Fluchen” held at the University of Göttingen in September 2025 and is due to appear in the series “Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament,” published by Mohr Siebeck. In the paper, I highlight the influence of votive language and formulae on cursing prayers, further developing the argument advanced in my previous monograph concerning the connection between the language of cursing and the genre of prayer.
2. Academic Activities
- I attended the weekly seminar of the MagEIA team and actively contributed to its work by leading a reading session on a lengthy Latin curse inscription from Rome.
- I attended the seminar of the Institute of Comparative Linguistics led by Professor Daniel Kölligan.
- I actively participated in the weekly reading group on the Cyranides led by Professor Kölligan. The reading group continues beyond the end of my fellowship.
- I attended the workshops and conferences held during my fellowship.
3. Outreach
- I participated in an episode of the Roots of Magic podcast, a collaboration between MagEIA and the Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP). The episode was published on 2 September 2026. There, I discuss the different forms of knowledge-seeking practices attested in the so-called Magical Papyri, as well as how to approach the question of belief in the efficacy of those ritual practices. The episode is available here: https://shwep.net/roots-of-magic/sara-chiarini-on-divination-and-belief-in-the-greek-magical-papyri/
4. Overall Assessment
My time in Würzburg was especially productive, thanks to the stimulating academic environment and the opportunity to focus on research without teaching and administrative duties. I particularly valued the reading sessions devoted to magical texts from periods and cultures outside my own area of expertise. These discussions inspired new perspectives and interpretive approaches to the sources on which I work.
