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On Tuesday, 8 July 2024, Korshi Dosoo (Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg) presented the final lecture of this semester’s MagEIA Ringvorlesung series, “Causers of Strife and Child Murderers: Demons and Other Malign Beings in the Coptic Magical Papyri” (original title „Unruhestifter und Kindsmörder – Dämonen und andere böse Wesen in den koptischen magischen Papyri“).

This lecture focused on the popular demonology of late antique Egypt (ca. 400–1200 CE) as revealed by Coptic magical texts, written in Coptic, the final stage of the Egyptian language, and illustrating a primarily Christian worldview, but one strongly influenced by its Egyptian setting and the Greco-Roman and later Islamic cultures that dominated Egypt at the time. The talk was structured around four questions: where did demons come from? What subclasses of demons do we find in Coptic magical texts? What did demons look like? And how did human beings interact with them in the context of magic?

As is common in orthodox Christianity, demons in Coptic texts are seen primarily as fallen angels, led astray by the Devil. While this idea originated in Hellenistic Judaism, a particularly rich account of the demonic fall is found in the Coptic Investiture of Michael, which describes how Mastema the Devil was once Saklataboth, the first-created being and the commander of the heavenly armies, but fell when his pride would not allow him to bow down before Adam, the human being created in the form and likeness of God. The angels who fell with him became the demons, the evil spirits who filled the earth and air, provoking sin and suffering among humans.

The basic vocabulary of Coptic demonology is drawn from the Greek-language Bible – daimōn or daimonion (‘demon’) and ‘spirit’ (pneuma), often specified as ‘unclean’ (akatharton) or ‘evil’ (ponēron), but a subcategory of demons take the names of “pagan” gods, interpreted in Judaism and early Christianity as demons who had tricked pagans into worshipping them. Greek deities such as Zeus and Apollo are listed alongside demonic names, and the plural of the native Egyptian word ‘gods’ (ntēr) shifted meaning to become a type of demon.

Alongside occasional mentions of beings drawn from Arab folklore, such as the djinn, we also find mention of one instantiation of the pan-Mediterranean and West Asian child-killing demoness, who appears in other traditions as Lilith, Lamia, Gyllou, or Al. In Coptic, her name is Aberselia, apparently from the Aramaic parzela (‘iron’). There was almost certainly a narrative prayer against Aberselia in Coptic, but it only survives in Ethiopic, in which Aberselia’s name is written as Werzelya. In this text her enemy is Saint Sisinnios, a Christianised form of the ancient Semitic heroic figure of Sassam bar Purāduš, who appears in the Greek magical corpus as Sesengen Bar Pharanges.

Finally, another subcategory of malign being is constituted by the dark angels responsible for tearing the souls of sinners from their bodies and torturing them in hell, known by numerous names, including ‘Powers of Darkness’ and ‘Decans’ (a name originating in Graeco-Egyptian astrology). These are one of the rare categories to be described in detail: literary texts depict them as dark figures, often drawing upon Egyptian religious iconography to depict them as animal-headed monsters.

When demons in general appear in Coptic magical texts, however, they are usually anthropomorphic figures with animal heads and bird-like feet carrying weapons, a feature shared with Jewish incantation bowls from late antique Mesopotamia, and likely going back to ancient Mesopotamian depictions of demonic beings with the claws of eagles. An interesting text from the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli Berachot 6a.6), highlighted by Naama Vilozny (“Lilith’s Hair and Ashmedai’s Horns”, 2015) in relation to the incantation bowls, describes a test which may be used to find out if a house is haunted by demons, by scattering fine ashes around one’s bed, and waiting to see if chicken-like footprints appear by the morning.

Demons appear most often in Coptic magical texts as dangerous beings against whom protective measures are necessary. The exact form of their attacks is often vague, but implied to range from causing disease, physically attacking victims, and inflicting mental illness. Protection from them may take the form of exorcistic rituals involving the recitation of formulae, washing with empowered water and anointing with oil, or else the wearing of amulets intended to cast them out and keep them away.

We also have evidence that in late antique Egypt demons were sometimes believed to serve as guardians of buried treasure, a role that is very prominent in later magic from mediaeval and early modern western Eurasia. Magic was used both to locate treasure, and then to expel these guardians who might make the treasure impossible to find, or directly attack unwary treasure hunters. A sixth-century Coptic text which describes driving off demons who protect treasure may represent the earliest surviving text of this type; these magical exorcisms sometimes borrow from, but are much more elaborate than, orthodox exorcistic practices officially approved by the Church.

Surprisingly, demons also appear as agents in some magical practices. In curses, people may ask for their enemies to be struck down by demons; a particularly cruel example is a fifth-century “prayer for justice” in which a woman asks God to send a demon to strike her daughter-in-law and render her barren as punishment for estranging her from her son. Other texts call upon demons more directly, asking them to use their quarrelsome nature (which originally got them expelled from heaven) to separate a married couple, or to destroy workshops or even churches.

Demons can be better understood when compared to angels, who occupy an opposing but complementary role in the “spiritual ecosystem”. While demons embody evil and chaos, angels represent divine order. Interestingly, angels can function in both protective and destructive roles in the magical texts. As representatives of divine wrath, they may be invoked to strike down enemies portrayed as sinful or as the enemies of God; as agents of divine benevolence, they may protect human beings from malevolent forces – including demons – or bring them favour or good fortune. Angels are thus bivalent beings, whose complexity arises from the ambivalent status of human beings in relation to God, whereas demons are (almost) without exception harmful – the only question is against whom this harm is directed.

The magical texts thus give us a vivid sense of ideas of good and evil, and the position of human beings in their social and supernatural world. They show some of the ways in which orthodox Christianity interacted with other religious traditions – appropriating “pagan” deities as demons, and incorporating djinn from Arabic folklore. They also reveal deep-seated fears ranging from social conflict and child mortality to more abstract questions of death and cosmic evil – and how ordinary people, rather than theologians, may have understood them.

On Monday, 1 July, the WAZ/MagEIA Ringvorlesung series welcomed one of its own for a lecture. Our fellow Jon Beltz gave a lecture entitled  “The Mesopotamian Grim-Reaper: Images of Namtar in Cuneiform Incantations and Rituals.”

Namtar was an underworld figure known from cuneiform texts from the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. He was associated with death, travel to the underworld, and plagues, making him roughly analogous to the Grim-Reaper of European lore. He served as an emissary from the underworld and also brought plagues to humanity. While he appears in a handful of mythological narratives in Sumerian and Akkadian, he was a ubiquitous figure in magical incantations and rituals.

The lecture began by contextualizing Namtar by examining the concepts and terms “god” and “demon” in ancient Mesopotamia. Both types of divine beings appear to be very similar in Mesopotamia and they cannot be divided along a good/evil binary division as they often are in the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Whereas gods are organized into a social hierarchy similar to that of urban Mesopotamia, demons have no strict hierarchies and function similar to bandits: living out in the wilderness and opportunistically targeting victims for predation. Humans interacted with gods and demons in different ways, as well. Gods could be influenced through offerings, hymns, and prayers, while demons needed to be dealt with through more aggressive means. These means could include having a more powerful divine being drive them out or bind them by oath, or attaching the demon to a substitute. This category of aggressive means is what we might call “magic.” Namtar is hard to classify as either a god or a demon because he participates in both categories. He has a clearly defined place in the social hierarchy of the gods, but he is typically dealt with through aggressive means (magic) rather than with offerings, hymns, and prayers.

Beltz’s presentation continued by showing some of the roles Namtar played in magical texts. Namtar frequently appears as one of a number of common demonic enemies in incantations, along with restless ghosts and demons causing various kinds of illnesses. The Mesopotamian magical texts conceptualize the relationship between the demon and the disease symptoms with two major metaphors. The first is one of demonic attack, in which the demon is often said to “strike” or “seize” the victim. The second is a metaphor of “possession,” in which the demon takes up residence in the victim’s body and causes the disease through its mere presence.

Namtar could also be the sole or primary target of magical texts as well. In one of these texts, a longer composition with the title Lugal-Namtar (which Beltz is currently working to edit and translate), may present Namtar as a “king of the demons” figure. In ancient Mesopotamia, the demon Pazuzu usually fills this role and in the late antique Near East we find figures named Ashmedai or Bagdana called the “king of the demons.” The text of Lugal-Namtar implies that Namtar may also join this cast of characters.

Finally, the lecture concluded with some depictions of Namtar in magical texts where he plays either a good role, or where his role is more ambiguous. Namtar sometimes appears in litanies where various gods are called upon to bind the offending demon by oath, except that he is one of the binding deities, rather than the demon being bound! In these and similar cases he can be said to be a positive force in the operation of the magical text. In the case of anti-witchcraft texts, Namtar is a more ambiguous figure. In some cases, witches may have called upon him to attack their victim, but in other cases the healer may call upon Namtar to go after the witches and take them to the underworld instead of the victim.

These various images of Namtar in cuneiform magical texts portray a complex and multidimensional figure within Mesopotamian magic. Studying him has much to tell us about magical texts, as well as the complex relationship between the concepts of “god” and “demon” in Mesopotamia.

On Tuesday, 17 June 2024, Rita Lucarelli (University of California, Berkeley) gave a lecture as part of the MagEIA Ringvorlesung series. The title of her talk was “Inverted of face, violent of voice: benevolent protectors with scary names and how to think about “demons” in ancient Egypt” (original title „Der mit verdrehtem Gesicht und gewalttätiger Stimme: Wohlwollende Beschützer mit unheimlichem Namen und wie man im alten Ägypten über „Dämonen“ denkt“).

The lecture provided an overview on the inhabitants of the ancient Egyptian netherworld, which are widely depicted and mentioned in a series of compositions found on papyrus, tombs and temples, and that are commonly labelled as “demons”. Ancient Egyptian demonology is also the topic of Rita Lucarelli’s upcoming monograph Agents of Punishment and Protection: Demonology in Ancient Egypt.

Scholars who have been working on demonology have struggled – and still do – when trying to define the entities they want to talk about. The search for an alternative term, less morally loaded than the modern English word demon, has brought Egyptologists to speak of daimones rather than demons (although the Greek term is also problematic), liminal beings, semi-divine creatures or minor gods, genii, and so on.

After reviewing the history of the study of Ancient Egyptian demonology, the lecture focused on those beings that are primarily represented in funerary compositions such as the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Books of the Netherworld. These are the so-called “guardian demons”, whose names usually evoke threatening traits in their character, while their main function is protective. The guardian demons have visible bodies whose depiction accompanies the textual mention of their names and helps the deceased to recognise and truly know the demon; the iconography of the guardians is indeed an integral part of the exclusive, esoteric knowledge about the Beyond that the magical texts provide to the dead. The visualization of each guardian empowers the place through which the deceased must pass (gate, door, region), and it is significant that many of the guardians’ names or epithets refer to a physical characteristic that also speaks of their agency: sḫd-ḥr, ꜤšꜢ ꞽr.w “Face-downward, numerous of shapes”, smt(.j) “The Hearer”, Ꜣh-ḫrw, “Sad of Voice”, dwn-ḥꜢ.t, “One who stretches out (his) brow“, sḳd ḥr, “One with vigilant face”, Ꜣsb.w, “The Radiant one”. Their bodies enact the empowerment of the deceased into an Akh (transfigured spirit) while successfully crossing the regions controlled by the guardians.

The guardian demons were then compared to disease-carrying demons, such as the plague-carrier beings who were believed to enter the human body and possess it; in the Papyrus Edwin Smith, one of the most important sources we have for the study of ancient Egyptian medical practices, it is written in reference to a disease that “as for something entering from outside, it means the breath of an outside god or death”.

The lecturer noted that the genre of exorcism was not as popular in ancient Egypt as, for example, in Mesopotamia, but Egyptians did believe that collective gangs of demons controlled or sent by gods, such as the so-called wpw.t.y.w, “the messengers,” ḫꜢ.t.y.w, “the slayers,” šmꜢ.y.w, “the wandering ones,” appeared as divine agents of punishment, and their popularity seems to increase with time. In the Late and Ptolemaic periods, the apotropaic spells against these gangs are also attested in temple texts, where some of these demonic legions are even represented together with the god or goddess who controls them, such as in the case of the so-called “Seven Arrows” controlled by Tutu or Bastet.

These gangs, often undefined in number and gender, were mainly characterised by being sent by deities to bring plagues and diseases on earth. This is especially the case of the “slayers” and the “wanderers” who appear in both magical and funerary texts from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period, and who are often presented as “demons of disease” sent by potentially angry goddesses such as Sakhmet and Bastet, but also by great gods such as Re and Osiris. Their inimical action can also be presented in the texts as punishment of social and cultic infractions; in Papyrus Jumilhac it is written that “if one neglects all the rites of Osiris at their times in this district... the slaughtering demons (ḫꜢ.t.y.w) and the wandering demons (šmꜢ.y.w) armed with their knives, will come and go at his (Anubis’) order, the slaughtering demons will seize the inhabitants of Egypt”.

The analysis of the guardian and disease-carrying demons was presented within an anthropological discourse on non-human agency (of the demons) vs. the ancient Egyptian world views about these beings and about the concepts of “fear”, “chaos” and “protection” in relation to the world of the Beyond as well as the influence of the divine and the demonic on Earth.

Finally, the lecturer discussed the question of translation versus understanding when approaching the ancient magical sources where demons are mentioned and depicted, as brilliantly discussed by George Lakoff in his book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (1987, University of Chicago Press). A quote from this book ended the lecture: “translation can occur without understanding, and understanding can occur without the possibility of translation”.