Team

PI, Core Team Comparative Linguistics

Daniel Kölligan studied historical comparative linguistics, philosophy, classical philology and Romance studies at the University of Cologne, where he also completed his doctorate with a thesis on verbal supplementation in Greek. After working as a Research Assistant at the University of Oxford and Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, he habilitated in Cologne in 2015 on the historical grammar of Classical Armenian. Since 2019, he holds the Chair of Comparative Linguistics at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg.
In the first phase of the project, the linguistics team is investigating the grammar and lexicon of Greek magical texts. The aim is, on the one hand, to compile a dictionary of magical terms in Greek by the PI, which will serve as the basis for a comparative dictionary of the various magical traditions being studied in MagEIA and, on the other hand, to present the grammatical (especially semantic and pragmatic) peculiarities of PGM by the postdoctoral researcher(s).

PI, Core Team Egyptology

Martin Stadler is an Egyptologist specializing in Egyptian religion, ritual traditions and demotic literature. In phase 1 of MagEIA, he will focus on the two apotropaic rituals sa-per (“protection of the house”) and meket-hau (“protection of the body”) in the Horus temple at Edfu, which were transferred to the temple context as adaptations of royal rituals. With its complete tradition of apotropaic rituals, the Horus temple offers a unique context that is to be systematically explored in a monographic study and made available for the understanding of comparable rituals. Stadler's research is part of the Würzburger Edfu-Projects, which also include the Horus Behedety-Project, which he has led since 2016. As part of this project, he regularly conducts epigraphic campaigns at the Temple of Horus, the best-preserved temple in Egypt.

Postdoc of the Ancient Near Eastern Studies core team

Beatrice Baragli is an Assyriologist whose interests include the history of Sumerian literature, rituals, ancient Near Eastern religions with a focus on the role of the sun god Utu/Šamaš and Sumerian-Akkadian bilingualism. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she worked on the Sumerian language of the first millennium BC. Her dissertation was a critical edition of the Sumerian Kiutu prayer invocations to the sun god. In the first phase of MagEIA, she will examine the purification ritual for the king Bīt rimki (“bathhouse”) with regard to its points of comparison with the other royal rituals of the Ancient Near East.

CV and Publications

Postdoc of the linguistics core team

Saverio Dalpedri received his education in Pisa, Freiburg, Cologne and Göttingen, where he was trained in both Indo-European studies and general linguistics. His specialty is historical-comparative linguistics, with a focus on the Greek language in its development from Mycenaean to modern dialects. His research interests concern the verbal morphosyntax of ancient Indo-European languages: He has worked in the past on topics such as verbal reduplication, movement events, resultative participial constructions and non-canonical alignment patterns in various languages. In the first phase of MagEIA, he will carry out a comprehensive analysis of the linguistic features of ancient Greek magical texts as attested from all geographical areas relevant to the research group.

CV and Publications

Postdoc of the Egyptology core team

Svenja Nagel has already studied  magical texts, especially from the Greco-Roman period, in previous research projects, focusing on the divinatory and erotic rituals of the PGM and PDM. In the first phase of MagEIA, she will go back chronologically to the oldest surviving written magical-ritual texts in the pyramids of the kings of the late 5th and 6th Dynasties. The focus will be on the apotropaic spells, whose special language, stylistics, formal structure and ritual mechanics will be analyzed in detail and finally compared with the later transmission and adaptation of corresponding texts in later periods.

Administration