A Wax Effigy Pierced by Three Bones: The Pharaonic Origins of a Late-Antique Cursing Ritual?. Issue 1 (1st January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Faraone, Christopher A.
• Is Part Of: Symbolae Osloenses. Volume 91:Issue 1(2017)
• Page Start: 126
• Page End: 133
• Publication Date: 2017-01-01
• Subjects: magic -- magical recipe -- curse; wax -- voodoo doll -- catfish -- bones -- inscribed name -- piercing -- Pharaonic -- late-antique -- Egyptian -- handbook -- Nile River; Classical philology -- Periodicals; 480
• DOI: 10.1080/00397679.2017.1358959
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0039-7679

Abstract

Abstract : Papyrus fragments from a late-antique Greek magical handbook preserve a unique recipe that directs us to make a wax "voodoo doll" and pierce it with three bones – "the left one, the right one and the one from the back" – "of an eisphatēs ", a previously unknown Greek word that has been emended to mean "sacrificial victim" ( sphaktēs ) or "dove" ( phattēs ). Emendation is not warranted, however, because the word is probably a local and previously unknown Egyptian term for the Nile catfish, which has three distinctive nail-like spines – the right and left pectoral and the dorsal – that match those of the eisphatēs . The bone of this fish is, moreover, used in a native Egyptian cursing ritual of Pharaonic date also involving a wax "voodoo doll", that is inscribed with the bone, rather than pierced by it.