DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18664#0009
PREFACE
The MS., dating from the third century a.d., which
is here edited for the first time in a single whole,
has long been known to scholars. Its subject-matter—
magic and medicine—is not destitute of interest. It is
closely connected with the Greek magical papyri from
Egypt of the same period, but, being written in demotic,
naturally does not reproduce the Greek hymns which
are so important a feature of those papyri. The
influence of purely Greek mythology also is here by
comparison very slight—hardly greater than that of the
Alexandrian Judaism which has supplied a number of
names of Hellenistic form to the demotic magician.
Mithraism has apparently contributed nothing at all :
Christianity probably only a deformed reference to the
Father in Heaven. On the other hand, as might have
been expected, Egyptian mythology has an overwhelm-
ingly strong position, and whereas the Greek papyri
scarcely go beyond Hermes, Anubis, and the Osiris
legend, the demotic magician introduces Khons, Anion,
and many other Egyptian gods. Also, whereas the
former assume a knowledge of the modus operandi in
divination by the lamp and bowl, the latter describes it
in great detail.
But the papyrus is especially interesting for the
language in which it is written. It is probably the
The MS., dating from the third century a.d., which
is here edited for the first time in a single whole,
has long been known to scholars. Its subject-matter—
magic and medicine—is not destitute of interest. It is
closely connected with the Greek magical papyri from
Egypt of the same period, but, being written in demotic,
naturally does not reproduce the Greek hymns which
are so important a feature of those papyri. The
influence of purely Greek mythology also is here by
comparison very slight—hardly greater than that of the
Alexandrian Judaism which has supplied a number of
names of Hellenistic form to the demotic magician.
Mithraism has apparently contributed nothing at all :
Christianity probably only a deformed reference to the
Father in Heaven. On the other hand, as might have
been expected, Egyptian mythology has an overwhelm-
ingly strong position, and whereas the Greek papyri
scarcely go beyond Hermes, Anubis, and the Osiris
legend, the demotic magician introduces Khons, Anion,
and many other Egyptian gods. Also, whereas the
former assume a knowledge of the modus operandi in
divination by the lamp and bowl, the latter describes it
in great detail.
But the papyrus is especially interesting for the
language in which it is written. It is probably the