A Faience Dwarf Deity
Campbell Price describes a small figurine dating to the Middle Kingdom.
magic
Magic in Roman Britain
REVIEW BY MIRANDA ALDHOUSE-GREEN This monograph examines the important, yet underestimated subject of the magical objects that form part of the archaeological footprint left by Roman Britons. It focuses on – so often neglected – small objects that form a…
The magic and power of hair in ancient Egypt
Amandine Marshall investigates the magical significance of the various hairstyles that ancient Egyptians adopted.
Motherhood and Early Childhood in Ancient Egypt: Culture, Religion and Medicine
REVIEW BY HILARY WILSON Amandine Marshall’s book, originally published in French in 2015, is a companion to her Childhood in Ancient Egypt (AUC, 2022). In the foreword to this English-language edition, Salima Ikram suggests that, despite limited source material, Marshall’s…
Through a glass darkly: Magic, dreams and prophecy in ancient Egypt
REVIEW BY ANNA GARNETT Following a publishing trend of making classic and out-of-print texts available to a wide general audience, this latest reprint was first published in 2006 but is now available in paperback for the first time. There are…
‘Magical’ Coptic texts
A collection of 600 ‘magical’ texts written in Coptic has been published following five years of study by researchers at the University of Würzburg. Papyri Copticae Magicae (published by de Gruyter) includes writings found on papyrus, parchment, paper, and ostraca.…
A Tawaret talisman for perilous pregnancy
Retired obstetrician W Benson Harer Jr explores the role of a special magic talisman in protecting pregnant women in ancient Egypt.
Magical honey: some unusual uses in Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egyptians used honey in cooking, especially to sweeten dishes in the absence of sugar, and in medicine, for its healing properties and to soothe coughs. They also used it for more unusual purposes, as Amandine Marshall reveals.
Living and Cursing in the Roman West: curse tablets and society
Review by Charlotte Spence. Stuart McKie’s reassessment of curse tablets sets itself up as a ‘paradigm shift’ in the scholarship and our understanding of these objects; and this is something he well achieves. The focuis on the examination of the…
At Home in Roman Egypt: a social archaeology
Review by Barbara E Borg ‘The real essence of an age is better revealed among trivial and commonplace things than among prominent monuments and great leaders.’ The opening sentence of this book captures succinctly its underlying principles. Following two chapters…
Egyptian Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Aswan to Alexandria
What was understood about the gods, goddesses, spirits, and demons in ancient Egypt depended to a great extent on what was being explained or taught and by whom, when, and where. What was formally written down was also governed by…
The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies
Ancient Mesopotamian literature, written in cuneiform from around 3000 BC, is haunted by omens and ghosts. Most of the sources on ghosts come from the 1st millennium BC, written in Akkadian, but some texts and ideas hark back to even…
John Dee’s mirror and the magic of geochemical analysis
The geochemical compositions of ‘the John Dee mirror’ were found to match obsidian from Pachuca
Wooden snake figurine
Snakes are rarely depicted in rock art in northern Europe, and are known to have had symbolic significance in the later world views of the Finno-Ugric and Sámi peoples
Plaque installed to remember the ‘witches’ of Corstorphine
Between 1563 and 1736, around 4000 people were accused of witchcraft in Scotland – the highest persecution rate across Europe.
Harry Potter: a history of magic
What link is there between archaeology and a best-selling series of children’s books? To find out, Lucia Marchini tours the British Library’s major new exhibition.
Witchcraft at Wern Wen: interpreting a 19th-century curse from north Wales
Why was a sinister malediction cut into a beam at a 19th-century farmstead near Llandudno? Catherine Rees and Richard Suggett explore this surprising discovery.
The Reigate Witch Bottle
How do you deal with a witch? In 17th century England, the answer was obvious: you prepare a ‘witch bottle’, with contents equally as bizarre as those in the cauldron of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. Witch bottles were white magic devices, that…