Visual Strategies in the Greek Magical Papyri:

Productive Integration of Image and Text

The

J. Kirsten Smith
14 May 2000

The mention of magic brings to the mind of the historian of medieval

art the apotropaic designs of early Byzantine textiles 1 or any one of
many miracle-working images from the East and the West. 2

To the scholar

of ancient religion, however, magic swiftly and surely brings to mind

the Greek magical papyri. 3

While the Greek magical papyri come

primarily from the Late Antique period, they have not been studied for
the insight they may yield into the visual culture of the late Roman,
early medieval and early Byzantine periods.

They have been mentioned

briefly in studies of early manuscript illumination 4 and early Byzantine

apotropaic imagery, 5 but in general they have received only superficial
treatment; and art historians have never considered their visual aspect
in its entirety.
1 Henry Maguire, Garments Pleasing to God, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44
(1990).
2 David Freedberg, The Power Of Images:
Studies in the History and
Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and
Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the
Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1994).
3 Karl Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae 2 vol, rev. ed. Albert
Henrichs (Stuttgart: Verlag B.G. Teubner, 1973-1974) and Robert W.
Daniel and Franco Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum, 2 vol., Papyrologica
Coloniensia 16 (1990). Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in
Translation, Second Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996).
4 Kurt Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex: A Study of the Origin
and Method of Text Illustration (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1970).
5 Henry Maguire, The Icons of their Bodies (Princeton:
Princeton
University Press, 1997); ibid., Magic and Geometry in Early Christian
Floor Mosaics and Textiles, Andrias: Herbert Hunger zum 80.
Geburtstag, ed. Wolfram Hrandner, Johannes Koder, Otto Kresten
(Vienna: Verlag der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1994).

Scholars of ancient religion from the outset investigated the

identities of the figures in the magical papyri, 6 but despite repeated
calls for a corpus of images, none has been produced. 7

Originally

scholars of ancient magic merely desired to decipher the iconography,

but interest has recently developed in the role of the visual in the
magical act:

What has not yet been accomplished, to my knowledge, is

a serious study of the drawings with a view to their iconography and,

more importantly, to their function as representatives and mediators of
power. 8

The weak aesthetic appeal of the illustrations most easily

explains the lack of interest among art historians:

In this whole

category of literature the illustrations are of extreme crudeness and

were it not that they are the only major coherent group of illustrated
rolls, they would not be worth introducing into the history of art at
all. 9

By exploring the complex system of visual strategies employed in

the magical papyri, I hope to demonstrate that this neglect has been to
the art historians disadvantage.
Within the category of magical papyri are two types of textual
evidence.

The first type consists of spells, preserved either

individually or in collections that appear to have functioned as

6 Karl Preisendanz, Akephalos:

der Kopflose Gott (Leipzig: J.G.
Hinrichssche Buchhandlung, 1926); A. Procop-Walter, Iao und Seth:
zu den Figurae Magicae in den Zauberpapyri, Archiv fr
Religionswissen-schaft 1933, 34-69; G. Machailides, Papyrus contenant
un dessin du dieu Seth tte dne, Aegyptus 32 (1952): 45-53; Irene
Grumach, On the History of a Coptic Figura Magica, Proceedings of the
Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology (Toronto: A.M. Hakkert
Ltd., 1970) 169-181.
7 The earliest are Samson Eitrem, Review of Akephalos by Karl
Preisendanz, Gnomon 3 (1927) 179; A. D. Nock, Greek Magical Papyri,
JEA 15 (1929) reprinted in Essays on Religion and the Ancient World,
ed. Zeph Stewart, Vol. 1, 1972, 194.
8 John Gager, A New Translation of Ancient Greek and Demotic Papyyri,
Sometimes Called Magical, Journal of Religion 67 (1987): 82.
9 Weitzmann (1970) 51.

handbooks for practitioners. 10

The second type consists of papyrus

pieces used in the application of a spell, especially as amulets. 11

The

Greek magical papyri have been well-documented and published, but

scholars are still in the process of clarifying their ritual and social
context as well as their inner workings.

David Frankfurter only

recently observed that a small number of scholars have begun to notice

that the PGM is not a random collection of spells but an anthology of
grimoires, of ritual manuals. 12

At the same conference, Richard Gordon

espoused the study of the Greek magical papyri as documents in their

own right:

How are we to understand the role of these books?

are the implications of the genre of the magical recipe?

make of its tacit rules, its evasions, silences? 13

What

What can we

Following this

trend, 14 the present inquiry explores the mechanics of images and imagemaking within the magical handbooks.
Within the handbooks are found a wide assortment of spells.
Preserved examples contain spells copied from diverse sources.

10

One

Those preserved as collections are PGM I, II, III, IV, V, VII, XII,
XIII, XIV XXXVI.
11 These are scattered throughout the PGM.
See also William Brashear,
Magica Varia, Papyrologica Bruxellensia 25 (Brussels: Fondation
Egyptologique Reine Elisabeth, 1991); Robert W. Daniel and Franco
Maltomini, ed., Supplementum Magicum, 2 Vols., Papyrologica Coloniensia
16 (1992). Roy Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets (Westdeutscher Verlag,
1994). For papyrus containing images without text see Ulrike Horak,
Illuminierte Papyri, Pergamente und Papiere I (Pegasus oriens I, 1992);
12 David Frankfurter, Ritual Expertise in Roman Egypt and the Problem
of the Category Magician, Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar
and Symposium, ed. Peter Schfer and Hans G. Kippenberg (Leiden:
Brill, 1997) 116.
13 Richard Gordon, Reporting the Marvellous:
Private Divination in the
Greek Magical Papyri, Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar and
Symposium, ed. Peter Schfer and Hans G. Kippenberg (Leiden: Brill,
1997) 81.
14 Providing perhaps the earliest example of this consciousness is
William Brashear, Magical Papyri: Magic in Book Form, Das Buch als
magisches und als Reprsentationsobjekt (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz,
1992).

copyist introduces a list of the secret ingredients and their code

names assuring that we have collected the explanations [of these
names] from many copies [of the sacred writings], all of them secret. 15
The sources or original authors of spells are sometimes noted, and
scribal errors have been detected. 16

We must therefore think of them as

pastiches, derivations and compilations excerpted and assimilated from

motley sources probably lost for good. 17
Two major categories of spells within the magical papyri present
themselves:

spells that may be considered part of the professional

development of the magician and spells that likely catered to a client

and often produced an object to be taken away.

The former includes

spells to procure a divine assistant and various other means of

divination. 18

The latter includes spells for the self-transformation of

the client, such as healing, protection or general good fortune, as

well as spells to change the balance of power in interpersonal
relationships, such as to procure favor or love or to inflict pain and

15

PGM XII.401-444. Also After detaching all the prescriptions

[bequethed to us in] countless books, [one out of all...] I have shown
you in this spell... in PGM I.42-195; and a copy from a holy book in
PGM III.424-466.
16 Brashear (1992) 34.
17 Ibid.
18 A spell for Apollonian invocation enumerates the aims:
And when he
comes, ask him about what you wish, about the art of prophecy, about
divination with epic verses, about the sending of dreams, about
obtaining revelations in dreams, about interpretation of dreams, about
causing disease, about everything that is a part of magical knowledge,
PGM I.262-347. Samson Eitrem, Dreams and Divination in Magical
Ritual, Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed.
Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1991): 175-187; David Frankfurter, Ritual Expertise in Roman
Egypt and the Problem of the Category Magician, Envisioning Magic:
A Princeton Seminar and Symposium, ed. Peter Schfer and Hans G.
Kippenberg (Leiden: Brill, 1997): 115-136. Fritz Graf, The Magicians
Initiation, Helios 21 (1994): 161-177.

suffering.

All the spells depend on ritual for the enactment of power 19

and thereby distinguish themselves from other types of magic in the

ancient world, especially apotropaic magic, which depends less on
ritual and more on the properties and inherent power of the material
and what is represented on it.
Gems constitute the class of amuletic materials that has been
best documented and interpreted. 20

Magical gems come mostly from the

second through the fifth centuries and are therefore roughly

contemporary to the magical papyri. 21

The amuletic function of gems can

be deduced from either designs of so peculiar a character as to admit

no other classification, or by the unmistakable evidence of
inscriptions. 22

The relationship between the gems and the papyri has

troubled some scholars. 23

Morton Smith observed that in the papyri,

gems engraved with designs are mentioned only nine times and that none
have close parallels in known gems. 24

He therefore postulated an

alternate set of instructions written by men who regularly prescribed

19

For this characterization, see Marvin W. Meyer and Richard Smith, ed.
Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994).
20 A. Delatte & P. Derchain.
Les intailles magiques grco-egyptiennes
(Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale, 1964) and Hanna Philipp, Mira et
Magica: Gemmen im Agyptischen Museum der staatlichen Museen (Mainz am
Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern). See also Louis Robert, Amulettes
Grecques, Journal des Savants (1981) 3-44; Morton Smith, Relations
Between Magical Papyri and Magical Gems, Papyrologica Bruxellensia 18
(1979): 129-130; and Jacques Schwartz, Papyri Magicae Graecae und
magische Gemmen, Die orientalischen Religionen in Rmerreich, ed.
Maarten J. Vermaseren (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981): 485-509.
21 Campbell Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets, Chiefly Graeco-Roman
(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1950) viii.
22 Ibid. 6.
23 Morton Smith, Relations Between Magical Papyri and Magical Gems,
Papyrologica Bruxellensia 18 (1979) 129-136; and Jacques Schwartz,
Papyri Magicae Graecae und magische Gemmen, Die orientalischen
Religionen in Rmerreich, ed. Maarten J. Vermaseren (Leiden: E.J.
Brill, 1981) 485-509.
24 Smith 132.

stones rather than the metal and papyrus strips of the Greek magical
papyri. 25

He contrasted the role of the visual in each, reckoning it

minimal in the papyri, but essential to the gems:

Most of the papyri are without illustrations; most of the
gems, on the other hand, seem to have been designed by men
who thought in pictures.

A few have nothing on them except

words or magic signs, but the great majority have images or

scenes for which the accompanying words - when they occuroften seem merely labels, signs of power, or even elements
of the design. 26
He concluded that the magicians of the papyri tried to express power in
words, while the magicians of the gems tried to express power through
symbols. 27
The relationship between the gems and the papyri is not, however,
so clear, and the papyri indeed contain a strong visual component.
Magical gems and papyri generally represent two distinct forms of
magic.

First, as Smith himself notes, the gems are primarily concerned

with self-transformation, especially healing and protection. 28

The

magical papyri, however, are often concerned with the exercise of power
in interpersonal relations.

Furthermore, the papyri provide

instructions for rituals of power, whereas most gems, in their everyday

wearing, operated mostly outside ritual and may not have even been
produced in a ritual context. 29

The Cyranides, a compilation of the

first or second century C.E., describes the natural properties of

animals, plants, and stones that may bring about a change in the health

25
26
27
28
29

Ibid. 133.
Ibid. 135.
Ibid. 136.
Ibid. 134.
Although there is a spell to consecrate a scarab.

PGM V.213-303.

or fortune of the wearer. 30

Gems must therefore be thought of in a

magical context more everyday than ritual, and any disjunction from the
magical papyri must be understood primarily as difference in operation.
Nevertheless, the paper will demonstrate that at moments the gems and
papyri do share visual strategies.

The defixiones, however, as

evidence for the application of magic, better relate to the Greek

magical papyri. 31
The aim of this paper, then, will be to evaluate the role of the
visual in the Greek magical papyri through a systematic analysis of the
strategies that operate visually, often at the intersection of text and
image.

The magical handbook as both product and context will be given

special attention.

This paper will conclude with an evaluation of the

value of the Greek magical papyri for the art historian.

THE STRATEGIES
Characteres

A complex dynamic between text and image operates in the Greek magical
handbooks.

Limiting the object of our inquiry to magical papyri from

handbooks, that is, any text in the format of a spell, we may thereby
limit our focus to the magician as he interacts with the spell within
the context of the ritual enactment of power.

The goal will be to

understand how the magician understood those elements that operated

visually.

We will first consider the characteres.

30

Translation of the first book in Maryse Waegeman, Amulet and

Alphabet: Magical Amulets in the First Book of Cyranides (Amsterdam:
J.C. Gieben, Publisher, 1987).
31 John G. Gager, ed., Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient
World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). A study of how visual
strategies play out in the defixiones is yet to be made.

Each character is a self-contained unit of lines and curves at

times arranged linearly as if to form a word or sentence but operating
altogether differently.

These forms are referred to most often

throughout the handbooks as characteres. 32

In one spell, they are

described as protective (rustikous charakteres). 33

When one character

appears among letters, collectively the group is labeled the letters

(ta grammata). 34 (Figure 1)

In spells in which characters are grouped

with voces magicae, a distinction is made between the two forms, the
names and the characters (ta onomata kai tous charakteras). 35 (Figures
2 & 3)

In another, a sequence of characteres is identified as

constituting a name (to onoma). 36 (Figure 4)

And in yet another spell,

the characteres are the signs of the zodiac, labeled zodia, the
diminutive of zoon, figure, but more precisely a sign of the zodiac. 37
(Figure 5)

One sign in isolation is referred to as to agathon zodion. 38

At times, we can identify the little figure, either as the ankh, the
symbol of life, 39 or as the shenon, the sign of protection, 40 neither of
which is identified as such in the spells.

The semantic field of

character ranges from a mark engraved or impressed to a distinctive

characteristic.

Both aspects seem pertinent here:

that which

32 II.27-28, 42, III.294, 299, 303, IV.1890, V.312, VII.194, 196, 197,
207, 465, 589, 860, 923.
33 PGM I.266-267.
34 PGM VII.381.
35 PGM VII.413-414, and VII.417-422, 925-939.
36 PGM XII.398.
37 PGM VII.795-845.
See Hans Georg Gundel, Weltbild und Astrologie in
den griechischen Zauberpapyri (Munich: C.H. Becksche
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1968) 52-64.
38 PGM V.171-172.
39 PGM II.28.
40 PGM II.43.

emphasizes the physicality of the production and that which emphasizes

the particularity of the product.
The characteres appear in all sorts of spells: in divine
invocations, 41 to bind a lover, 42 to heal a physical ailment, such as a
cough 43 or scorpion sting, 44 or for victory. 45

Sometimes more

complicated spells indicate the specific purpose: to protect against

demons 46 or to remember what is said. 47
types of materials:

Characteres are drawn on all

with myrrh ink on a plant, 48 with a bronze stylus

on mud smeared over a door frame, 49 carved on a table, 50 on the ground

where one sleeps, 51 and on an egg with a special ink. 52

They may work

both individually and collectively, one on each leaf of a seven-leafed

sprig of laurel, 53 or in complete isolation, such as an ankh made on the
ground, the upper stroke of which you are to align yourself with as you
sleep. 54

They may be arranged in lines 55 (Figure 6) or in a circle. 56

(Figure 7)

A figure may be unique to any one spell, or indeed to the

entire corpus; or it may be repeated in any one line 57 or throughout the

corpus.

The characteres may operate in combination with other forms,

forming horizontal lines interspersed with voces magicae 58 (Figure 8) or

41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58

PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM

I.262-347, II.1-64.
IV.296-466.
VII.206-207.
VII.193-196.
VII.390-393.
I.262-347.
II.1-64.
II.1-64.
II.64-183.
III.282-409.
II.1-64.
XII.96-106.
I.262-347.
II.1-64.
IV.2622-2707, VII.193-196.
III.282-409, V.304-369.
XVIIc.1-14.
II.64-183.

vertical lines flanking a carmen figuratum. 59 (Figure 9)

The

characteres may even lose their unitary character and form a non-linear
composition of their own. 60 (Figures 10 & 11)

The characteres in the

diagram need not match their description in the text, either being more
than the number instructed by the text 61 or there being one set of
characteres in the text and a different set in the diagram. 62 (Figure
12)
The characteres came into use no earlier than the second century
C.E. 63 and can therefore be understood to be a phenomenon of the Roman
period.

Geographically, they may be understood as pan-Mediterranean.

In addition to the papyri found in Egypt, they appear on a wall of the

theater in Miletus 64 and on defixiones from Syria (late 5th, early 6th,
Figure 13), Carthage (3rd C., Figure 14), and Rome (late 4th, Figure 15
& 16), 65 to name only a few.
syncretistic contexts:

They appear in Jewish, Christian and

on the floors of Christian basilicas, 66 (Figure

17) in Late Antique Aramaic magic bowls, 67 (Figure 18) and even in later
Coptic magical texts. 68 (Figure 19)
Characteres operate on gems in similar ways.

In a four line

inscription on the reverse of a brown jasper gem, letters from the

Greek alphabet occupy the upper two lines and characteres the lower

59

PGM IV.296-466.
PGM XLIX, LX.1-5. Although these examples do not come from spells,
but from amulets.
61 PGM I.262-347.
62 PGM VII.579-590.
63 Gager (1992) 10.
64 Ibid..
65 Gager (1992) nos. 6, 12, 13 & 14.
66 Maguire.
67 Naveh and Shaked.
68 Marvin W. Meyer, and Richard Smith, ed., Ancient Christian Magic:
Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994).
60

10

two, as if adhering to the conventions of written language. 69 (Figure

20)

Similarly, on one face of a carnelian stone, an ouroboros

encircles two lines, the upper containing four Greek letters and the
lower four characteres. 70 (Figure 21)

On a green jasper gem,

characteres appear on and encircling a shield as if operating

apotropaically. 71 (Figure 22)

On other gems, however, the characteres

are scattered and their order or system is not easily perceived.

On a

red jasper gem, figural motifs occupy the center, but characteres and
other more explicitly figural motifs are scattered throughout the
fields. 72 (Figure 23)

One side bears a dog-headed creature in profile

surrounded by one palm, two birds and various characteres.

On the

other side is a bucranium in the center surrounded by two birds, a

four-legged male animal, a ladder, a crenelated line, and a variety of
vowels and characteres.
alone.

In the final gem example, characteres operate

On one side, a Greek inscription encircles the framing

ouroboros, and the characteres in the field are arranged linearly. 73

(Figure 24)

On the other side, however, the characteres are placed

here and there without any alignment or indeed any concern for orderly
placement.

With their variety of formatting choices, characteres may

function textually but need not.

Writing thus seeks to harness and

direct the power of the characteres.

As noted above, the meanings of some individual characteres are
known:

69
70
71
72
73
74

the shenon is a sign of protection, 74 the ankh the symbol of

Delatte & Derchain,

Philipp no. 192, p.
Delatte & Derchain,
Delatte & Derchain,
Philipp no. 193, p.
PGM II.43.

no. 32, pp. 36-37.

118.
no. 34, pp. 37-38.
no. 202, p. 154.
119.

11

life. 75

Some may have associations, such as the six- or eight-rayed

asterisk with Hermes. 76 (Figure 25)

pictorial. 77

Some are more explicitly

At times one can recognize a laurel branch (Figure 5), a

plain or decorated letter (Figure 26), an animal (Figure 27), a

geometric shape (Figure 9), perhaps a tironian note or even a
christogram (Figure 28).

In fact, at times, one cannot draw a distinct

line between a character and a figure, except by distinctions in scale.

(Figures 27 & 29)

In one instance, the drawing of a tripod is labeled

ho character ho peri tou tripoda. 78 (Figure 30)

Ultimately, these

diverging referents themselves seduce, confound, and mislead the

uninitiated.
Statements within the spells may give us some insight into how
the characteres operate.

One explains that the demons avoid the

characters magical powers which you are about to have (daimones

phul[accontai char]akteron ten theian energeian henper melleis exein). 79
In another spell, the spoken component commands, Cause now my shadow
to serve me, because I know your sacred names and your signs and your
symbols... (oti oida sou ta hag[ia] onom[ata ka]i ta semeia kai ta
parasema). 80

And another, I know your signs, symbols and forms (oida

sou ta semeia kai ta parasema kai morphas). 81

Because the characteres strike one as similar to Egyptian
hieroglyphs, a linguistic interpretation seems logical.

David

Frankfurter has put forth one such explanation based on the centrality
75
76
77
78
79
80
81

PGM II.28.
Barb 8. Although I question this.
in Demotic spell, PDM xiv.117-149, 150-231.
PGM III.196.
PGM I.274-275.
PGM III.612-632.
PGM III.494-611.

12

of words in the magical act. 82

Identifying a mixture of Greek and

Egyptian magical traditions in the Greek magical papyri, he claims that

the nature of each system of writing translates into the system of
magic of each language.

He observes that deriving from the Egyptian

language, transcribed by hieroglyphs that correspond to the visual

aspect of the referent, 83 Egyptian spells depend on the transcribed,
visual element. 84

Thus Frankfurter interprets the characteres as

constituting a sort of sacred alphabet, powerful in its very lack of

referents. 85
A linguistic approach, however, assumes the existence of a system
and, as a result, obstructs our view of the other functions of the
characteres.
function.

The characteres adhere to no system, neither of form or

The characteres appear in all kinds of spells, on all kinds

of materials, and in all sorts of visual arrangements, linearly, in

isolation, in compositions, or simply scattered.

There is a multitude

of designs: some repeat frequently, but most are unique.

Some develop

from letters, others from geometric shapes, others from objects or

constellations and still others in the imagination.

Suggestions have

been made about their origin, from astrological to pictographic, but as

John Gager observes they were taken to be mysterious and powerful,
which means that their real origins were not understood at all. 86
The styles of the characteres vary.

There are sequences of round

forms, of square forms, of characters made with minimal strokes, and

82

David Frankfurter, The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic:

The Power of the Word in Egyptian and Greek Traditions, Helios 21
(1994) 189-221.
83 Ibid 192.
84 Ibid 198.
85 Ibid 210.
86 Gager (1992) 11.

13

others with expressive curves and angles.

In general they refuse to be

systematized and have wide applicability.

The characteres are able to

operate under various circumstances and according to various

strategies, whether textual, symbolic or pictorial.

The characteres

are not mediators of speech; yet like hieroglyphs their very form
matters.

Characteres are symbols without referents, and their power is

not able to be articulated; it is a power beyond speech.

Carmina Figurata
Giving a particular visual form to speech, the carmina figurata capture
and extend its duration.

Parallels in the larger visual culture, from

diagrams in manuscripts on military tactics to the signatures on Iliad

tablets and the poetry of Optatian, demonstrate the ubiquity of these
visual forms as well as permit a more subtle understanding of their
mechanics.
Unlike the characteres, the spells do not refer to the carmina
figurata with a single term.

Once they are referred to as klimata, 87

translated as figures, but more literally meaning inclinations or

slopes and thus operating more by description than by identification.
The form of the voces can be described by the text, but they may also
be diagrammed.

In one spell we have only a diagram:

the voces form

two triangles, one with point up, the other down. (Figure 31)

In

another spell, the composition is only described, in the shape of a

heart, like a bunch of grapes (kardiakos hos botrus). 88

The spells

often describe the common triangular formation as a heart, leading

87
88

PGM I.12.
PGM III.70.

14

one to wonder whether it may be more than a casual description. 89

Other shapes includes a plinthion, translated once as a square, 90 in
another described as one word under another one and translated as
like bricks (hen hupo to hen titheic and hoc plinthion). 91
compositions may be more complicated.

The

One spell instructs the writing

of the heart and the characters (ten kardian kai tous charakteras),
while a diagram accompanying the text provides the details:

a large

central group more trapezoidal than triangular contains a not-easilytranslatable palindrome that is identified elsewhere in the spell as a
divine name. 92 (Figure 9)

The name is repeated seven times, dropping

one letter from the beginning and the end with each subsequent line.
Vertical vowel and character sequences flank the trapezoid.

Another

spell instructs that the hundred letter name of Typhon be written

curved as a star (hoc astera). 93

And yet another spell demands the

composition of a thirty-letter name, another palindrome, in two wings

(pterugia), while the accompanying diagram is somewhat confused. 94
(Figure 32)

In another, wings (ta pterugomata) describes vowel

sequences in ladder formations. 95 (Figure 33)

In one formation, the

voces form a triangle, and the Greek text of the spell encircles the
triangle. 96 (Figure 34)

The descriptions and diagrams may complement or

contradict each other, but either method will alone suffice, and
descriptions are as idiosyncratic as the spells themselves.
89

Heart perhaps also used in VII.703.26.; kardioeidoc in PGM LXII.76104.

90 PGM IV.1275-1322.
91 PGM VII.652-660.
92 PGM IV.409.
93 PGM IV.1382.
94 PGM VII.716.
95 PGM XIII.900.
96 not in a spell, PGM XVIIIb.1-7.

15

Generally, the carmina figurata represent the secret name of the

divinity upon whom the spell calls.

Sometimes they consist of orderly

vowel sequences, 97 in one instance identified as a name 98 and in another

instance identified as the seven letters of the magicians. 99

More

often the formations contain not-easily-translatable vowel and

consonant sequences that are identified elsewhere in the spell as the
name of the summoned divinity. 100

Many are palindromes, but not all. 101

Like the characteres, the carmina figurata figure in all sorts of

spells, from those for a divine assistant, 102 to all-purpose spells, 103
to those for generally malicious purposes. 104

Carmina figurata appear

on most common writing materials : papyrus, 105 metal leaf, 106 even ones
own hand. 107

There is, however the consideration of space: they are not

generally instructed to be put on smaller objects and have limited

utility on gems, which by their very format determine the visual aspect
of any writing thereon. 108

In one spell, the carmen figuratum is not

instructed to be made, but itself instructs the speaker of the spell. 109
The instructive power of figurated speech is directly reflected in
another spell, which instructs the magician to speak the whole name

97

PGM I.1-42.
PGM V.70-95.
99 PGM LXIII.1-7.
100 PGM III.70 & 118.
101 PGM XXXIII.1-25, XXXIX.1-21.
102 PGM I.1-42.
103 PGM IV.1331-1389.
104 PGM III.1-164.
105 PGM I.1-42, IV.1331-1389.
106 PGM III.1-164.
107 PGM VII.300.
108 Although there is one clear example, Delatte & Derchain no. 130 p.
105.
109 PGM V.70-95.
98

16

thus in wing formations and again to speak this name too, leaving off
one letter in succession, so as to make a wing formation. 110
One spell explains the power of these names by identifying them
as the immortal names, living and honored, which never pass into
mortal nature and are not declared in articulate speech by human tongue
or mortal speech or mortal sound. 111

David Frankfurter identifies the

carmina figurata, in their visualization of the spoken voces magicae,

as the Greek aspect of the papyri. 112

Fritz Graf interprets the carmina

figurata as an oral rite made durable through writing, a voice forever

speaking... 113

A consideration of parallels from the larger visual

culture will reveal greater subtlety and power in their functioning.

Treatises on military tactics, such as the Techne taktike of
Asklepiodotos (1st Century C.E., preserved in a copy, Figure 35),
contain diagrams for marching and battle formations that resemble the
carmina figurata in that individual units combine to make geometric
forms. 114

In another manuscript containing such diagrams as sketches

for the formation of cavalry divisions, the Taktike theoria of Aelian

(1st, 2nd Century C.E., preserved in a copy, Figure 36), the text
justifies the drawings as help (epikouron), by asserting that so
often words do not suffice. 115

At the least, these diagrams remind us

that visual clarity is an aim in the organization of otherwise similar

elements, whether troops or vowels.

The carmina figurata in the Greek

110

PGM II.1-64.
PGM IV.606-610, also VII.940-968.
112 Frankfurter 1994, 200.
113 Fritz Graf, How to Cope with a Difficult Life, Envisioning Magic
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997) 99.
114 Alfred Stckelberger, Bild und Wort:
Das illustrierte Fachbuch in
der antiken Naturwissenschaft, Medizin und Technik (Mainz am Rhein:
Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1994) 110.
115 Ibid.
111

17

magical papyri must be appreciated for the extent to which they make
more legible and more memorable the words to be spoken, and indeed this
instructive purpose is made explicit in the spells, as noted above.
The non-conventional arrangement of letters for visual effect in
the magical papyri finds an interesting parallel in the class of
objects commonly known as the Iliac Tablets.

Dating mostly from the

late first century B.C.E. and the early first century C.E., they show
Graeco-Roman low reliefs in miniature furnished with Greek inscriptions
and illustrating literary works. 116

It is not the illustrations on the

front side with which we are concerned, but the inscriptions on the
back. (Figures 37 & 38)

It seems that the artist, a certain Theodoros,

signed his name on the back in the form of magic squares. 117

On the

tablet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the instructions for reading

the magic square are written above:

gramma meson kath[egeitai]. 118

One

begins, therefore, with the middle letter and reads up, down, right, or
left, making 90 degree turns as one wishes until hitting a dead end,
reading the same phrase no matter what path taken.

Each tablet with

such magic squares contains the title of the work represented and/or
the signature of Theodoros, there noted for his texne.
square, interestingly, has the shape of an altar. 119

One magic
(Figure 37)

These magic squares demand an active reader but reward him with
pleasure in its ingenuity.

Hidden on the back, this identification of

the literary and creative sources is less likely to be noticed.

116

In

Anna Sadurska, Les Tables Iliaques (Warsaw: 1964) 7.

A total of six: five listed in Sadurska and one added by Horsefall.
Tabulae Iliacae in the Collection Froehner, Paris, Journal of
Hellenic Studies 103 (1983) 144-147.
118 Sadurska 29.
119 Horsefall, Stesichorus at Bovillae, Journal of Hellenic Studies 99
(1979) 28.
117

18

their hidden context, the skill required for their production and
reading, and their basic function of naming, the magic squares
provide an interesting parallel for the carmina figurata of the Greek
Magical Papyri.
The carmina figurata of the magical papyri find parallels not
only in non-literary works and inscriptions, but also in contemporary
literature.

Indeed, the true master of visual word play in the late

Roman period was the poet Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius (ca. 260/270 d. after 333). 120

According to an allusion in one poem, he was

originally from North Africa. 121

He wrote poems for the emperor

Constantine, suffered exile, and may have even brought about his return
from exile through the composition of a group of poems containing
Christian elements addressed to Constantine.

Many aspects of his

poetry relate to the carmina figurata of the Greek magical papyri.

Among art historians, only Carl Nordenfalk has considered the visual
aspect of Optatians work.

In his study of the decorated letter,

Nordenfalk situated Optatians poetry within the development of the

book as a visual experience because of its combination of the visual
with the previously-privileged spoken aspect. 122
The literary merits of Optatians poetry have been less
appreciated.

The editors of the Selected Library of Niceaen and Post-

Niceaen Fathers described it thus: It is a most extraordinary

120

G. Polari, Carmina Publilii Optatiani Porfyrii, 2 Vols. (Corpus

Scriptorum Latinorum Paravianum, 1973). For biography, T.D. Barnes,
Publius Optatianus Porfyrius, American Journal of Philology 96 (1975)
173-186.
121 Poem XVI.16.
122 C. Nordenfalk.
Die sptantiken Zierbuchstaben. 1970. 57. Carl
Nordenfalk, A Note on the Stockholm Codex Aureus, Nordisk Tidskrift
fr Bok- Och Biblioteksvsen 38 (1951) 145-155.

19

aggregation of acrostics, pattern poems, and every possible device of

useless, mechanical variety of form, of little value, excepting as a
sort of dime-museum exhibition of patience and ingenuity. 123

In a

variation on the acrostic, the letters at the beginning or the end of a

line, or even on a particular diagonal, may form a concealed phrase. 124
In a variation on the palindrome, lines read both forward and backward
as hexameters, or pentameters, or elegiac couplets.

Finally,

technopaegnia, in the strictest sense of figurative or shaped poems,

are among his works.

The shapes include a water-organ (Figure 39), an

altar 125 (Figure 40) and panpipes (Figure 41). 126

These poems attest to

the ornamentation of words through their very arrangement.

They also

demonstrate the abstraction of form as a strategy, thereby allowing us

to see a significance in the description of forms as hearts, wings
and grapes.
In his recent evaluation of the work of Optatian, W. Levitan
comments on the engagement of the reader in deciphering the poems and
the seemingly exponential multiplication of any one poem:

Lines must

be read backward; metrical elements transposed... each poem also

contains a number of inherent permutations of itself, a number of
potential dispositions. 127

The extendibility of a physically compact

form finds striking parallels in the carmina figurata of the papyri.

As the name of the divinity shrinks and expands in the so-called heart

123

Ser II: 2, 447.

especially those in the collection given to Constantine.
125 Interestingly, several earlier technopaegnia are in the forms of
altars. RAC 2 (1954) 911.
126 Carmina 20, 26, and 27.
127 Levitan, W.
Dancing at the End of the Rope: Optatian Porfyry and
the Field of Roman Verse, Transactions of the American Philological
Association 115 (1985) 248.
124

20

formation, so does the impression of containability diminish.

Levitans comments on the visual transformation of the words may indeed
be said of the carmina figurata of the papyri:

So long as a poem is

considered a sonic artifact with duration in time, grounded in the

human voice, its basic constituent remains the intoned phrase,
numberless in variety as vocal gestures are numberless.

When, however,

it becomes a visual artifact with extension in space, it is capable of

a much more radical analysis, at least in those languages with an
alphabetic convention of representation. 128

The conventional

interpretation of the carmina figurata as the figuration and extension

of the duration of speech, finds a challenge in Levitans claim for the
detachment of Optatians words from their articulated aspect and even
their referent:

...writing no longer functions primarily as the

record of speech but as the medium of a linguistic artifact whose

interest lies in an aspect of language extrinsic to its reference,
usually a sensory aspect.

The poems of course make sense, but the

impulse to verbal mimesis is conspicuously weak. 129

Similarly, the

palindromes of the papyri make sense not when read, but when visually
deciphered.

Visualization of speech thus creates possibilities beyond

mere articulation.
From non-magical parallels, we may gather several insights into
the carmina figurata of the Greek magical papyri.

First, concern for

clarity must not be underestimated nor the extent to which simple

visual format can instruct how a text is to be read.

Second, the

verbal display and concealing of names, whether in the papyri or the

128
129

Levitan 254.
Levitan 249.

21

Iliad Tablets, reveals their power and the need for this power to be
controlled.

Finally, we learn that visualization creates possibilities

not allowed by speech, especially through the liberation of text from

verbal mimesis.

Figurae Magicae

The attention of the scholars of religion has mostly been directed

toward the proper identification of the figurae magicae.

The figurae,

from textual descriptions to actual figurines, are easily understood

according to notions of the animate image. 130
are prescribed throughout the handbooks:
described, drawings sketched.

Figurines and drawings

figurines are usually

In their creation and in their

animation, visual representations participate in the enactment of power

through ritual.

An aspect that has not been studied is the part that

text plays in their strategy.

To that end, this section will consider

the most explicit text-image interface, that of writing on the figurae

magicae.

We will thereby complete our investigation into those visual

strategies in the magical papyri that integrate image and text to

produce power through their tension.
The figurae magicae are not referred to as such in the magical
papyri.

Molded forms are generally referred to in terminology distinct

from that of drawn forms.

Plasma hermou 131 (plasma meaning anything

molded, an image, a figure or anything imitated, a forgery) refers to a

figurine of Hermes made of dough.

130
131

The form of a figurine may be

Brashear 48.
PGM V.379.

22

conveyed by verb choice, plason hermen, make Hermes. 132

In another

spell, ho andrias (an image of a man, a statue) combines with the

command plason to indicate a figurine. 133

To refer to two wax or clay

figurines, one spell indicates zodia duo 134 without special reference to
volume, but later in the spell the female figure is referred to as to
plasma tes agomenes. 135

To zodion usually, however, refers to a drawn

figure, such as an image drawn on a metal sheet. 136

Often a sketch is

introduced by to zodion estin, as a sort of caption. 137

In one spell, a

figure to be drawn several times, is called to zodion, 138 but its

materiality is also indicated by the verb, zographyson. 139
ten zographian refers to a drawn figure. 140

Similarly,

In an isolated instance, a

humanlike figure (anthropoeides zodion) is instructed to be drawn on

linen. 141

To skema refers to the composition of an ouroboros with

voces, the spell, and characteres. 142

used.

Less concrete terms are also

I command your image/likeness (to eidolo sou), 143 refers to the

representation of a god incised on a metal leaf, later referred to in a

general sense as to hier[on] eidolon. 144

132

One representation referred

PGM IV.2362.
PGM IV.3132.
134 PGM IV.298.
135 PGM IV.305.
136 PGM LXXVIII.5.
137 PGM VII.477. Others with captions above: IV.2119, 2114, VIII.110,
XII.384, and VII.918.
138 PGM IV.2017, 2070.
Other figures in the same spell are zodia: 2114,
2119.
139 PGM IV.2047.
140 PGM VII.232.
141 PGM XII.122.
142 PGM VII.589.
143 PGM III.90.
144 PGM III.115.
133

23

once as to zodion is also called to theorema (that which is looked at,

a sight, a spectacle). 145
Figures generally operate through their very form and likeness,
but in select instances, many from one handbook, figures combine
intimately with text.

Within a spell for divine revelation, a

seemingly random component prescribes that the accompanying sketched

figure be inscribed on a piece of clothing from someone who died
violently and then be cast into a lamp. 146

(Figure 42)

Referred to as

the Headless One in the previous spell, of which this spell is a

variation, the humanoid figure holds in one hand a sprig of laurel and
in the other perhaps a candle wick, both objects used in the spell.
Its distinct body parts are covered with writing.

On the arms, torso,

thighs and calves vowels are written, none repeating the sequence of
any other, neither on the body nor in the text.
chest runs SABAOTH.

Across the top of the

The basic pattern is here exemplified: a figure

with its secret names inscribed all over its body.

Knowledge of secret

names thus allows the magician to appropriate the power of the invoked
divinity.
A spell to bind a lover instructs the making of two figurines
from either wax or clay, one of a man in the form of Ares and one of a
woman. 147

The man holds a sword with which he threatens the woman, and

the woman is on her knees, her arms bound behind her back.

On the

head, the ears, the face, the eyes, the right shoulder, the arms, the
hands, the belly, the pudenda, the buttocks, and the feet of the female
figurine, various voces are to be written.
145
146
147

PGM VII.468 and 474.

PGM II.64-183.
PGM IV.296-466.

24

On her breast, however, the

name of the woman being attracted is to be written.

After the

inscription, thirteen needles are to be stuck into various parts and an

inscribed lead tablet fastened to the figures.

The entire assemblage

is then placed in a grave.

In another binding spell in the same handbook, a dog formed of
wax is inscribed on his side with a sequence of characteres. 148
spell summons the dog Kerberos to attract the woman.

The

In a third spell

from this handbook, a dead spirit is called upon as a divine assistant,

and after an inscribed wreath is placed on someones head and on the
forehead are to be written palindromic voces. 149

So here we have an

actual body, although whose is not clear.

A fourth spell to increase business, from the same handbook,
describes a Hermes figurine of beeswax: a man holding a bag and a staff
around which is coiled a snake. 150

To consecrate the figurine, which

will receive the prescribed sacrifice, the spell is repeated four times
for each body part.

Additionally, for each body part, voces, perhaps

from the spell, are written on strips of papyrus to be attached to the

figure.

To be written on the snake is the name of the good demon,

another voces sequence.

In another example, the various parts of a donkey, incised in an
unbaked brick, are inscribed: 151

on its face, IAO IO; on its neck in

the shape of a bell, EOEOE; on its back, LERTHEMINO; on its breast,

[S]ABAOTH (as on the first example); and under its hooves ABRASAX.
Iao, Sabaoth and Abrasax are divine names used throughout the papyri.

148
149
150
151

PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM

IV.1872-1927.
IV.1928-2005.
IV.2373-2440.
IV.3255-3274.

25

Lerthemino is used elsewhere in the spell as a divine name, but EOEOE

may just sound like the bell whose shape forms its contours or perhaps
the sound the donkey makes.

Appearing in two of the three versions of

the so-called Hidden Book of Moses, the magical name of Apollo marks
the chest and back of a statuette of the god, as well as the
accompanying serpent and tripod. 152

Finally, in a short spell whose

purpose is not clear, an ibis surrounded by a spiraling sequence,

consisting of the instructions intermixed with the voces, is to be
written on ones own hand. 153 (Figure 29)
Inscribed figures also appear on gems.

In a gem from the Louvre,

a lion roars on one side, and on the opposite side, rotated 90 degrees,
a figure stands on a serpent, incised in the very same minimal style of
the figures in the papyri. 154 (Figure 43)
consisting mostly of vowels.

Writing covers all forms,

On a second gem from the Louvre, a more

clearly male figure, with the contours of his musculature, face, and
hair represented, also stands on a serpent. 155 (Figure 44)
writing covers all forms.

Again,

In a final example from Berlin, a male

figure in the style of the first gem holds a staff in one hand and a
round object in the other. 156 (Figure 45)

Writing, including variations

on IAO and other vowel sequences, covers his body, as well as most of
the background.

A figurine inscribed with words of a spell comes from

the Greek island of Euboea, although it dates very early, to the fourth

152

PGM XIII.105-113 and 660-669.

PGM VII.300.
154 Delatte & Derchain no. 415, pp.291-292.
155 Delatte & Derchain no. 416, p. 292.
156 Philipp no. 187, p. 114.
For more examples, mostly known from
drawings, see Bonner, A Miscellany of Engraved Stones, Hesperia 23
(1954): 151-152 and Goodenough vol. 3, fig. 1144 & vol.2, p. 269.
153

26

century B.C.E. 157 (Figure 46)

Binding spells cover the front and the

back of this flat, gingerbread-man-style figurine.

Samson Eitrem explained the writing on the body as reflecting
associations between parts of the body and specific demons. 158

He

therefore interprets it as a protective device, offering numerous

cross-cultural parallels from early 20th C. North Africa to his
Norwegian ancestors. 159

A. A. Barb offered an interpretation of this

writing on the body base on the Shiur Komah, a text that he labels
Cabbalistic or Jewish-Gnostic. 160

It describes God anthropomorphically,

giving the measurements and secret names of each part of his body. 161
While this text provides an interesting parallel, I believe that the
similarity reflects a shared visual strategy rather than a pattern of
influence.

To understand this visual strategy, we will examine first

the role of the body in the spells, then look in the larger culture for
other interactions of the body with writing, and finally we will
consider the body as the channel of magic, through its sensation of
both pleasure and pain.
Throughout the spells is a preoccupation with purity, as is
typical in a ritual context. 162

Many procedures involve self-anointing

or smearing oneself with some concoction.

For invisibility, one spell

prescribes the smearing of the body with an olive oil based mixture. 163
A second invisibility spell prescribes a mixture based on oil of
157

Gager no. 19, p. 86.

Based on Origen, Contra Celsum VIII.58.
159 S. Eitrem, Papyri Osloenses I (1925): 38-39.
160 A. A. Barb, Three Elusive Amulets, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 27 (1964): 1-22.
161 Ibid. 5.
162 A random sampling: PGM III.282-409, I.1-42, IV.26-51, 52-85, 12651274, VII.319-334.
163 PGM I.222-231.
158

27

lily. 164

To remember what is said, another spell instructs the

magician to anoint his lips with a honey mixture. 165

In a divination

spell, self-anointing is followed by rubbing the body with a mixture of

berries, spice, nightshade and Hermes finger. 166

A spell for divine

vision directs that the magician anoint the right eye with water from a
shipwreck and the left eye with Coptic eye paint. 167

The preparation of

a scarab includes self anointing with a salve of lilies or myrrh or

cinnamon. 168

In another spell for divine vision, Coptic eye paint, this

time ground with a fly, is to be smeared on the eyes. 169

In addition to preparation of the body, either through abstaining
from sexual intercourse or from food, or through self-anointing or
through the smearing of magic ingredients all over the body, ritual
power can also be enacted through the body, by the consumption of
magical ingredients or symbolically through the insertion of the
magical text into the body of a figurine.

In a memory spell, the

magician is instructed to write the spell with ink on papyrus and then
to wash the ink off into water and drink the water. 170

To summon a

demon, one spell instructs the magician to lick the ink off an egg with
which the magical name was written. 171

In a second spell for memory,

one is instructed to form twelve bread rolls in the shape of female

figures, and then to eat them on an empty stomach. 172

164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172

PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM

I.247-262.
II.1-64.
II.64-184.
V.54-69.
V.213-303.
VII.335-347.
I.232-247.
VII.505-528.
III.410-423.

28

In a second

spell, in an initiation ritual, one eats three figures with animal

faces made from fine flour. 173
Power through the body is symbolized by the making of hollow
spaces in figurines in which to put writing.

Into a wood figurine of

Eros is inserted a piece of gold leaf upon which is inscribed the

invocation. 174

Into a figurine of Hermes is inserted a piece of papyrus

with magical names written upon it. 175

Into a three-headed statue with

the heads of a falcon, a baboon, and an ibis, each with the crown of a
different god, the insertion of a stone and a piece of papyrus
containing the voces is part of its consecration ritual. 176

In one last

example, a papyrus containing the spell is inserted into a figure of

Hermes. 177
One can cite multiple examples of the body as the locus of
ritual power in the Greek magical papyri.
most obvious.

I have chosen those that are

But even where amulets are to be worn 178 and how magical

tools are to be assembled 179 reveal the centrality to these procedures

of the body as the channel of power.

The final concrete evidence for

the body and magic are spells that enumerate the parts of the body upon
which the power is to be enacted.

In a binding spell, the invocation

runs, Every flaming, every cooking, every heating, every steaming, and
every sweating that you [masc.] will cause in this flaming stove, you
[will] cause in the heart, in the liver, [in] the area of the navel,
and in the belly of [object of spell] ... and she puts what is in her
173
174
175
176
177
178
179

PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM
PGM

XIII.1-343.
IV.475-829.
IV.2359-2366.
IV.3125-3171.
VII.370-446.
IV.475-829.
III.1-164.

29

hand into my hand, what is in her mouth into my mouth, what is in her
belly onto my belly, what is in her female parts onto my male
parts... 180

Another love spell recites a litany of body parts:

her heart], her guts, her liver, her spirit, her bones. 181

[burn

Both spells

list the body parts of the object of the spell in order that she may
feel attraction to the client.
Writing on a magical figurine has a long tradition in ancient
Egyptian destructive magic, in which the name of the enemy was written
to specify the object and to direct the force of the ritual power. 182
Tradition and common sense explain the basic operations.

Text on a

figurine representing the object of the spell names and identifies the
object thereby directing the force of the ritual power.

Text on a

figure representing the source of power appropriates the power through

use of its secret name, a sort of password.

The power of a name is

commonplace in the magical papyri, whose omnipresent voces represent

the secret names of divinities.

In the magical handbooks, the body can

be the body of the divinity invoked, of the object of the spell, or

even of him who casts the spell. 183
The drawing and molding of figures in general appeals to the
persuasive force of analogy.

Accompanying the image of an eye, one

spell reads, As long as I strike the eye with this hammer, let the eye
of the thief be struck, and let it swell up until it betrays him. 184
(Figure 31)

In another recipe in which a foot is drawn above voces,

180

PGM IV.94-153.
PGM VII.981-993.
182 Maarten J. Raven, Wax in Egyptian Magic and Symbolism,
Oudheidkundige Mededelingen 64 (1983) 9-13.
183 PGM VII.300, in which instructions, voces and character/figura are to
be written on the hand.
184 PGM V.70-95.
181

30

the spell reads, Just as these sacred names are being trampled so also
let him. 185 (Figure 47)

While visual analogy aims to produce action,

the making of images is itself action.

As proof that these procedures

were actually followed, a figurine in the Louvre is a favorite of those

who study the Greek magical papyri. 186 (Figure 48)

A crudely sculpted

female figure kneels with her arms bound behind her back, and needles
pierce strategic parts of her body, in striking correspondence to a
spell mentioned above. 187

Fritz Graf has offered two complementary

explanations for this figurine.

First, on a more theoretical level, he

denies that such sticking with needles is voodoo, but rather that
...the piercing aims at making the woman think only of the lover
alone.

The copper needles ... pierce those limbs which have to do with

erotic attraction. ... It is thus a sort of erotic anatomy of the

female body. 188
explanation:

On a more practical level, Graf offers a psychological

but to fashion the statuette of a naked woman, kneeling

and hands bound to the back, and then to pierce it with selected
needles, pronouncing the names of the limbs which were pierced looks
decidedly neurotic, to say the least.

Thus, the praxis might even help

to ease temporarily psychic pressure. 189

In addition to the role of the body as the physical object of
ritual power, the use of the body as a metaphor in the larger culture
may provide a more subtle understanding of this last visual strategy.
185

PGM X.36-50.
Pierre du Bourget, Ensemble magique de la priode romaine en
Egypte, La Revue du Louvre et des Muses de France (1975): 255-257;
Sophie Kambitsis, Une nouvelle Tablette magique dEgypte, Bulletin de
lInstitut Franais dArchologie Orientale 76 (1976): 213-223; Gager
(1992) nos. 27 & 28, p. 94.
187 PGM IV.296-466.
188 Graf, Envisioning Magic 97-98.
189 Ibid. 105.
186

31

Because humans perceive the world through the body and understand the
world according to the bodys organization and processes, the body
provides the most meaningful analogy, or at least framework for
understanding much that is external to it.

The natural result of the

special metaphoric power of the body is its attainment of symbolic

power.

The body as a mnemonic framework 190 and the body as microcosm 191

provide some mechanisms to understand the basic functioning of the body

in the magical papyri.

But what of the writing?

Why on it, rather

than around it?

In psychoanalytic terms and through a feminist lens, Page DuBois
discusses the metaphor of the female body as a writing surface in
ancient Greece. 192

On the decoration of female figurines, she argues

that decoration is worship, but it is also bondage- the mark of

possession, the appropriation of the surface of the body. 193

While

DuBois understanding is in general too tightly bound to her

ideologies, the same mechanism is indeed at work in the papyri.

The

voces, sometimes simply vowel sequences, sometimes common names of

divinities, such as IAO, SABAOTH, and ABRASAX, and sometimes
untranslatable at our current state of knowledge, reflect an attempt to
appropriate the power of the divinity whose name is written or to
project the power onto the object whose name is written.

Possession is

190 Mary Carruthers, Reading with Attitude, Remembering the Book, The
Book and the Body, ed. Dolores Warwick Frese & Katherine OBrien
OKeeffe (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997) 1-33.
191 Susan Stewart, On Longing:
Narratives of the Miniature, the
Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1984) 125-131..
192 Page DuBois, Sowing the Body:
Psychoanalysis and Ancient
Representations of Women (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1988).
193 Ibid. 135.

32

most certainly the point, either of the divinity and its power or of
the object of the spell.

Consideration of these bodily inscriptions as

the branding of an animal or a slave, or even tattooing if the name of

the significant other is written, allows us to see in this visual
strategy a bodily potentiality attaining symbolic force.
The descriptions of martyrdoms by Prudentius (348 - ca. 405)
demonstrate the association between bodily pain and writing on the
body. 194

Prudentius introduces the first book of the Peristephanon, on

the Spanish martyrs Emeterius and Chelidonius, by establishing heavenly

writing in gold as the counterpart of the earthly writing in blood of
martyrdom:

Written in heaven are the names of two martyrs; Christ has

entered them there in letters of gold, while on earth He has recorded

them in characters of blood. 195

The martyrdom of Eulalia provides a

vivid description of the experience of martyrdom according to this

metaphor.

As the executioners mangle her body, she proclaims, See,

Lord, thy name is being written on me.

How I love to read these

letters, for they record thy victories, O Christ, and the very scarlet
of the blood that is drawn speaks the holy name. 196
Prudentius introduces his story of the martyr Cassian with his
own experience of seeing an imago of his martyrdom at the tomb.

He

194 Martha Malamud, Making a Virtue of Perversity:

The Poetry of
Prudentius, Ramus 19(1990) 64-88; Jill Ross, Dynamic Writing and
Martyrs Bodies in Prudentius Peristephanon, Journal of Early
Christian Studies 3.3 (1995) 325-355; Michael Roberts, Poetry and the
Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1993).
195 Loeb Edition.
I.1-3: Scripta sunt caelo duorum martyrum vocabula,
aureis quae Christus illic adnotavit litteris, sanguinis notis eadem
scripta terris tradidit.
196 III.136-140: scriberis ecce mihi, Domine.
quam iuvat hos apices
legere qui tua, Christe, tropaea notant! nomen et ipsa sacrum loquitur
purpura sanguinis eliciti.

33

sees Cassian, a schoolteacher, being stabbed by his pupils wielding

styli.

The caretaker explains that Cassian was a schoolteacher,

skilled in putting every word in short signs and following speech

quickly with swift pricks on the wax. 197

A Christian, he was

persecuted by being presented to his pupils, who did not much like him.
His hands tied behind his back, his body became a surface to stab with
the sharp end of the stylus and to scrape with other. 198

In response to

his pain, one pupil says, You see we are giving you back all the
thousands of characters (notarum) which as we stood in tears we took
down from your teaching.

You cannot be angry with us for writing; it

was you who bade us never let our hand carry an idle style... We like
making pricks, twining scratch with scratch and linking curved strokes
together. 199

In a final example from his poetry, Prudentius contrasts

the scrolls of the governor that record the execution with the books in
heaven made by an angel to record not only the words, but also the
wounds of the martyr. 200
In these poems of Prudentius, we see a striking re-appropriation
and reversal of the visual strategy.
subject of power, not its object.

Writing is on the body of the

The pain of such activity is here

extreme, but through bodily suffering, power is attained.

representation of power than wounds to the body?

197

What better

But usually such

IX.23-24: verba notis brevibus conprendere cuncta peritus, raptimque

punctis dicta praepetibus sequi.
198 IX.51-54.
199 IX.71-74, 77-78:
reddimus ecce tibi tam milia multa notarum, quam
stando, flendo te docente excepimus. non potes irasci quod scribimus;
ipse iubebas numquam quietum dextera ut ferret stilum...pangere puncta
libet sulcisque intexere sulcos, flexas catenis inpedire virgulas.
200 X.1111-1135.

34

power is claimed by the giver, not the receiver. 201

The reappropriation

results in an intimate connection between pain and pleasure, stated

explicitly about Eulalia who counted her suffering a pleasure to
herself. 202

A conjunction between the extremes of pain and pleasure

is here exploited as the location of divine power. 203

Writing on the body serves spells for both divination and
attraction.

Through the representation of pain, possession of a body

is symbolized.

In the love spells, the analogy of burning demonstrates

pain in the service of pleasure.

A recent film, The Pillow Book,

provides an interesting cross-cultural comparison.

Based on the 10th

century diary of Sei Shonagon, a Japanese courtesan, the movie explores

the interface of writing and the body, in both pleasure and pain.

womans sexual desires are conditioned by the memory of her father

writing calligraphy on her face and the back of her neck on her
birthday when she was a child, as a reenactment of Gods creation.
Each birthday, he would recite, When God made the first clay model of
a human being, He painted in the eyes, the lips, and the sex.

Then He

painted in each persons name, lest the owner should ever forget it.
If God approved of his creation, He brought the painted clay model into
life by signing his own name.
fetish.

As an adult, this memory becomes a

But she comes to exploit it as a creative channel, producing

books of poetry using human flesh as her page.

201

She even writes on the

Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative

Representation in the Early Christian Behavior (London: Routledge
Press, 1995) 115.
202 supplicium sibi delce rata. III.15.
203 Torture, writing on the body, and slightly different power dynamics
reappear in the story of the Graptoi saint, Theodore and Theophanes.
Mary B. Cunningham, trans., The Life of Michael the Synkellos (Belfast
Byzantine Texts and Translations, 1, 1991) 83-97.

35

dead body of her lover, which her publisher exhumes so that he may
capture the poetry.
the dead body.

This scene of sacrilege concludes with an image of

A pen moves across its stomach turning into a scalpel,

and blood flows.

Thus, the peculiar visual strategy of inscribing figures not
only continues a long tradition, but is also one example of a possibly
universal phenomenon.

In its historical moment, we discover a

significant parallel in the bloody writing on martyrs bodies at the

powerful juncture of extreme pain and extreme pleasure.

The

conjunction between the body as the channel and writing as the means
creates a privileged space for ritual power.

As with all text-image

combinations in the papyri, text activates image.

But uniquely,

writing on the body works for both pleasure and pain, and power
operates indiscriminately for both.

Writing on the image of all

images, the human body, thus represents the exercise of power through
the extremes of bodily sensation.

The Handbook, As Both Context and Product

Each handbook has its own peculiarities.

PGM I (Berlin, 4th/5th C.),

for example, contains seven spells, all of which concern the

professional development of the magician.

Visual strategies are

infrequent, including only one character sequence and one carmina

figurata composition.

PGM II (Berlin, 4th C.) contains only two

spells, both of which are for the professional development of the

36

magician, but unlike PGM I, characteres, carmina figurata, and figurae

magicae appear with regularity.

PGM III (Louvre, 4th C.) contains

fifteen spells for the magician, in which there are few visual
elements.

PGM IV (Bibliotheque Nationale, 4th C.) is most obvious in

its status as a copy in its hodgepodge compilation of magical texts

mostly for the personal use of the magician, including complicated
initiation rituals, astrological information and Homeric verses to
serve as charms.

Visual components appear throughout the fifty-three

spells, if not in sketches, then in descriptions.

PGM V (British

Museum, 4th C.?) contains spells that may be of use to both magician
and clients, including those for the consecration of magical objects,
for visions, and procedures for catching a thief.

PGM VII (British

Museum, 3rd/4th C.) contains the most spells, seventy-nine, many of

which one could imagine reflecting the demands of a clientele in their
mundane concerns and simple procedures, such as how to eat garlic and
not stink or how to drink a lot and not got drunk, as well as many
recipes for healing and protection, but not without spells reflecting
the magicians concern for divination and astrology.

In PGM XIV

(Leiden and London, 3rd C.), the spells, mostly in Demotic, rely little
on the visual.
PGM XXXVI (P.Osl.I,1, 1/2 4th C.) is unique in many ways and
merits special attention. 204

Acquired personally by scholar Samson

Eitrem during a visit to Egypt in 1920, the roll measures 2.44 by .243
meters and contains nineteen spells, six on the verso.

When found, the

papyrus had been folded, the marks of which are still visible.

Each

spell occupies one column, and figurae magicae, when prescribed, appear
204

Samson Eitrem, Papyri Osloenses I (1925).

37

at the bottom of the column.

when the spell runs short.

Such formatting results in unused papyrus

The varying states of preservation of the

columns indicated to Eitrem that the recipes were copied from various
sources. 205

The quality of the papyrus also revealed to Eitrem its

circumstances:

That fine paper such as we find in our papyrus could

be used in such an extravagant and pretentious way sufficiently shows

how popular this special form of magic had grown amongst well-to-do
people. 206
Eight spells operate through figurae magicae, most of which are
drawn.

As a group, they are notable for three reasons.

are quite large in scale.

First, they

Second, they are frequent and by their

constant placement at the bottom of the page produce a rhythm with

which one moves through the roll.

Furthermore, the figurae magicae

dominate the visual strategizing of the spells, while the characteres

and carmina figurata appear less regularly.
In the first spell, a charm to restrain the sketch represents
the invoked god, Seth-Typhon, and is to be incised on a lead lamella
and then placed near the object of the spell. (Figure 49)

The

composition is referred to as to zodio[n] kai ta onamata.

His secret

names flank him in close correspondence to the names written in the

text of the spell.

Zagoure, another magic name, appears above the

figure, interrupted by his head, as a sort of title.

On the body of

the figure Seth and Brak are written repeatedly, as well as some of the
secret names.

Seth is written on the neck one time, on each arm three

times, and seven times in the space between the legs.

205
206

Ibid. 31.
Ibid. 31.

38

Brak is written

once on the chest and each leg, and below the Seth sequence in the
space between the legs.

Below the Brak on the chest are two nipples

and two vowels. Over the abdominal area the first names of the sequence
of secret names are written vertically with feathers suggested below.
Finally, over the stomach are seemingly random letters.
In the second spell, a charm to restrain anger and to secure
favor and an excellent charm for gaining victory in the courts, on a
silver lamella to be worn as an amulet the seal of the figure and the
names (ten sphragida tou zodiou kai ta onomata) are to be inscribed.
(Figure 50)

The description of an image as mediated through a seal is

unusual in the papyri.

The composition shows a magical figure

surrounded on all sides by his names and flanked by vertical character

sequences.

The bizarre figure holds in his hand an ankh with circles

at the ends of its arms and another character with round points stands
atop the head of the serpent held in the figures other hand.
symbols similarly have lines that terminate in circles.

The

While both

address interpersonal relations, the first acts through the object of

the spell and the second through the subject.
The third spell, a love spell of attraction which makes
virgins rush out of their homes, contains a third, ever different,
figure (zodion). (Figure 51)

Unlike the first two, this figure is to

be drawn on papyrus which is then to be glued to the wall of a bath, so

that in analogy the female object may be glued to the subject.

The

figure holds a whip and a female figure, and can easily be explained as
the visualization of the enactment of the spell.

The fourth spell,

introduced as a divination spell but ultimately for the purpose of

attraction, similarly instructs the drawing of the figure (zodion) on

39

papyrus. (Figure 52)

This is the first composition, however, to

include carmina figurata, rather than the straightforward presentation

of the names.
The next two spells operate without a visual aspect.

The seventh

spell, to break spells, returns to a figura magica, the description

of which constitutes the greater part of the spell. (Figure 53)

It

instructs one to draw on lead a unique figure (zodion monopoioun),

holding a torch in its right hand and a knife in its left hand.

On its

head should sit three falcons and under its legs a scarab over a
ouroboros.

Around the figure a series of characteres is to be written.

The characteres in the text have not been put in their place but remain
in horizontal lines, awaiting their integration with the figure in the
application of the spell itself.
to the description.
main figure.

The sketch corresponds only roughly

Birdlike forms sit on the head and arms of the

In his hand is a head, not a torch.

A small round object

at his feet may be a scarab, but there is no ouroboros.

Furthermore, a

band between his legs indicates the binding of the figure, although
this is not a binding spell.

A polygonal object, the identification of

which has inspired some speculation, stands to the right.

The eighth spell, for attraction, contains no figure, but
instructs that characteres be written along with the spell on an
unbaked piece of pottery. (Figure 54)
written IAO.
a column. 207

207

On one of the characteres is

Eitrem identified this as an altar, the circles signaling

Also in the spell, but without its purpose identified, is

Ibid. 83.

40

a grid of vowels, probably instructions themselves.

There was a

figura, but it is no longer visible. 208

After a spell without any visual elements, a spell to inflict
harm follows with the final figura. (Figure 55)

A lead lamella with a

figure and carmina figurata is to be put into the stomach of a frog.

The frog is then to be sewn up and hung on a reed on the property of
the object of the spell.
(step-like).
bizarre-ness.

The voces are instructed to be made Bathron

This figure relates to the previous figures in its very

A figure is referred to in the twelfth spell, but is

neither described nor appended.

In addition to these figurae magicae,

characteres are used in the eleventh and thirteenth spells.

The

eleventh spell has characteres in the style of those used throughout

the spell, but the thirteenth spell prescribes them in a completely
other style. (Figures 56 & 57)

Those spells on the verso contain no

visual elements, nor are they formatted as those on the recto.

Variations in strategies reflect the need for a spell to operate
distinctly from other spells, toward its specific purpose.

Although

Eitrem saw this roll as a copy, it is more notable for its unity, both
in format and in the employment of visual strategies.
indicates the conception of the role as its own entity.

This unity
If indeed

copied, coherency conceals such practice.

Conclusions

In summary, this paper seeks to make two contributions: first to

contribute to our understanding of the inner workings of the magical

208

Ibid. 84.

41

papyri, specifically the visual strategies in the magical handbooks;

and second to explore the degree to which the visual strategies of the
papyri connect the magician to the larger visual culture.

This paper

aims to establish the value of the magical papyri as an object of study

for the art historian.
Until now, the use of the magical papyri has been superficial.
Kurt Weitzmann used them as evidence for his papyrus style of
illustration. 209
symbols. 210

They have also been treated as a repertory of magical

Carmina figurata have been cited as evidence for the power

of the repetition of characteres in a floor mosaic. 211

A discrepancy

exists in this logic, however, for characteres are not regularly

repeated in the papyri.
Furthermore, the papyri have not been harvested for the
information they contain on the relationship between text and image in
the context of ritual power, with the result that simplistic statements
are made concerning such matters.

For example, the catalogue entry for

a large bronze pendant excavated from an early Christian sanctuary in

Palestine with a long inscription asserts that this invocation shows
that letters and words were equal partners with designs in providing
safety from malevolent powers. 212

Henry Maguire similarly simplifies

209

Kurt Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex: A Study of the

Origin and Method of Text Illustration (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1970) 47.
210 Henry Maguire, Magic and Geometry in Early Christian Floor Mosaics
and Textiles, Andrias: Herbert Hunger zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Wolfram
Horandner, Johannes Koder, Otto Kresten (Vienna: Verlag der
Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1994) 266.
211 Ibid. 274. repeated in Magic and the Christian Image, Byzantine
Magic, ed. Henry Maguire (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection, Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1995)
68.
212 Eunice Dauterman Maguire, Henry P. Maguire, and Maggie J. DuncanFlowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House (Champaign-

42

the illustrations of the magical papyri without understanding their

complexity, locating the power of the magical papyri in obscurity and
repetition. 213

In general, however, the magical papyri are noticeably

absent from other studies on the objects of Late Antique magic. 214
While all of the magical papyri, handbooks and amulets, come from
Egypt, we may take the visual strategies as pan-Mediterranean phenomena
because of the many non-Egyptian parallels referred to above.

Image

and text exist in productive tension: image can act textually, writing
can act visually, and together image and writing, by simultaneous
reference to the body and to action, can represent a channel of power
that does not discriminate between pleasure and pain as it is
experienced by the body.

The magical papyri thus demonstrate that a

text-image relationship need not be established by narrative and that

various strategies may be discerned for their operation.
The visual strategies at work within the magical papyri may
perhaps illuminate our understanding of other circumstances in which
image and text combine for visual effect.
visual symbolism of any sacred script?
image? And an image activate writing?

What is the value of the

When does writing activate an

Do the tituli in the narrative

program of a church, the program itself metaphorically understood as

inscribing the body of the church, serve to activate the text by naming

Urbana: Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, University of Illinois Press, 1981) 16.
213 Henry Maguire, The Icons of their Bodies:
Saints and their Images in
Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996): 119-120.
214 Gary Vikan,
Art and Marriage in Early Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks
Papers (1990): 145-163. Gary Vikan, Art, Medicine, and Magic in Early
Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984): 66-86.

43

it?

And might not what the letters combine to form be less important

than their very appearance? 215

To conclude, we have here a set of texts of sacred knowledge,
powerful in their secrecy.

Their exclusivity is enhanced by the

refusal of the designs to be deciphered, systematized, or understood.

A degree of familiarity, a vague correspondence to known symbols,
objects, and signs insures the confidence of the client, but a larger
degree of unfamiliarity insures the need for the magician.

Through an

examination of the three types of ritual operations in the Greek

magical papyri in which writing and image are most tightly bound (the
characteres, the carmina figurata, and the figurae magicae), I have
attempted to demonstrate that the relationship between image and
writing is one of productive tension.

While the text-image dynamic of

Late Antiquity has been explored primarily with regard to narrative, in

the magical papyri we see a more complex set of relations, in which an
image can imitate the symbolic value of text, in which the
visualization of speech heightens rather than limits its power, and in
which text and image represent the experience of power.

215 Providing an alternative answer to Herbert Kesslers question, If

medieval paintings really were meant for those faithful who could not
read, why do almost all of these pictures include words? in Diction
in the Bibles of the Illiterate, World Art, vol. 2., ed. Irving
Lavin (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989)
297.

44

Figure 1: PGM VII.376-384

Figure 2: PGM VII.411-422

Figure 3: PGM VII.925-939

Figure 4: PGM XII.397-400

Figure 5: PGM VII.795-845

Figure 6: PGM IV.2622-2707

Figure 7: PGM V.304-369

Figure 8: PGM II.64-183

Figure 9: PGM IV.296-466

Figure 10: PGM XLIX

Figure 11: PGM LX.1-5

Figure 12: PGM VII.579-590, text & diagram

Figure 13: Defixio from Apamea, late fifth/early sixth C.

Figure 14: Defixio from Carthage, 3rd C.

Figure 15: Defixio from Rome, late 4th C.

Figure 16: Defixio from Rome, late 4th C.

Figure 17: Beit Mry, Church Floor Mosaic

Figure 18: Aramaic Magic Bowl

Figure 19: Coptical Magical Text, 10th C.

Figure 20: Gem, Paris

Figure 21: Gem, Berlin

Figure 22: Gem, Paris

Figure 23: Gem, Paris

Figure 24: Gem, Berlin

Figure 25: Syrian Hermes Monuments with Asterisks

Figure 26: PGM VII.417-422

Figure 27: PDM lxi.63-78

Figure 28: PGM XVIIa.1-25

Figure 29: PGM.300

Figure 30: PGM III.187-262

Figure 31: PGM V.70-95

Figure 32: PGM VII.703-726

Figure 33: PGM XIII.734-1077

Figure 34: XVIIIb.1-7

Figure 35:

Cod. Parisin. graec 2442 fol. 1r/1v

Fig. 36: Cod.Bernensis 97, fol. 419-423

Figure 37: Iliac Tablet

Figure 38: Iliac Tablet

Figure 39: Carmen XX

Figure 40: Carmen XXVI

Figure 41: Carmen XXVII

Figure 42: PGM II.64-183

Figure 43: Gem, Paris

Figure 44: Gem, Paris

Figure 45: Gem, Berlin

Figure 46: Figurine from Euboea, 4th C. B.C.E.

Figure 47: PGM X.36-50

Figure 48: Figurine from Egypt, Louvre

Figure 49: PGM XXXVI.1-34

Figure 50: PGM XXXVI.35-68

Figure 51: PGM XXXVI.69-101

Figure 52: PGM XXXVI.102-133

Figure 53: PGM XXXVI.178-187

Figure 54: PGM XXXVI.187-210

Figure 55: PGM XXXVI.231-255

Figure 56: PGM XXXVI.256-264

Figure 57: PGM XXXVI.275-283

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