ANCIENT EXECRATION MAGIC IN COPTIC AND ISLAMIC

NICOLE B. HANSEN University of Chicago

To what extent can the folklore of modern Egypt be traced back across the centuries to pharaonic times? This question has never been adequately answered before, to a great extent because the disciplines involved in the study of the history and are tradition­ ally defined by religions, languages and rulers, with a focus on one time period-pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Christian, Islamic or mod­ ern. In spite of their expertise in only one of these periods, scholars have nonetheless made varying and sometimes contradictory assump­ tions about the continuity and change of Egyptian culture between time periods with which they are familiar and those which they know very little. Some believe little has changed, while others believe the culture has been completely transformed. Moreover, these assump­ tions have not been questioned systematically to determine the extent of continuity and change of Egyptian culture. More specifically, the question of the dependence of magic practices in Egypt on their ancient counterparts has received only brief attention in several articles. 1 The literature on the subject has

1 A. Fodor, "Traces of the Isis Cult in an Arabic Love Spell from Egypt," in 17ze Intellectual Heritage qf Egypt: Studies Presented to Lasz[6 Kakosy by Friends and Colleagues on the Occasion qf his 60th Birthday, U. Luft, ed. (Studia Aegyptiaca 14; Budapest: La Chaire d'Egyptologie, 1992) 171-86; A. Fodor, "Arabic Bowl Divination and the Greek Magical Papyri," in Proceedings qf the Colloquium on Popular Customs and the Monotheistic Religions in the and North : Budapest, 19-25th September 1993, A. Fodor and A. Shivtiel, eds. (17ze Arabist 9-1 0; Budapest: Eiitviis Lorand University Chair for Arabic Studies & Csoma de Koriis Society Section of Islamic Studies) 73-101; A. Fodor, "Sufi Magic-Greco-Egyptian Magic," in Proceedings qf the Colloquium on Logos, Ethos, Mythos in the Middle East & North Africa (L EM) -Part Two- Budapest, 18-22 September 1995, A. Fodor and A. Shivtiel, eds. (17ze Arabist IS; Budapest: Eiitviis Lorand University Chair for Arabic Studies & Csoma de Koriis Society Section of Islamic Studies, 1996) 1-11; E. Gaal, "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 27 ( 1973) 291-300; D. Pingree, "Some of the Sources of the Ghayat al-Oakam" Journal qf the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43 (1980) 1-15; P. W. Schienerl, Diimonenfurcht und biiser Blick: Studien zum Amulettwesen (Aachen: Alano-Verlag, Edition Herodot, 1992) 7-33; D. Wortmann,"Neue magische Texte" Bonner ]ahrbiicher 168 (1966) 56-110. PART SIX- EARLY AND the potential to be multiplied, especially with the recent proliferation of studies on ancient magic that could serve as a starting point for diachronic research. In particular, in his recent study of ancient Egyptian execration, Robert Ritner has convincingly shown that execration praxis re­ mained virtually unchanged for 4000 years of ancient Egyptian his­ tory, and therefore this work provides a useful baseline for compari­ son with later material that forms the focus of the present paper.2 Drawing upon a variety of textual, archaeological and ethnographic sources, I intend to demonstrate the continuity of the mechanics of execration practice in Egypt in later times, while showing that the ancient religious belie£~ in which the practice has been couched have been recast by magic practitioners in terms of the two subsequently dominant religions in Egypt, Christianity and Islam. Various sources indicate that execration has usually been carried out by magicians, and not by just any individual, 3 based on consulta­ tion of written instructions that have remained in constant use for centuries. Thus it would not be unreasonable to expect that a ritual carried out 600 years ago consulting the manuscripts to be discussed would not vary significantly from a ritual based on consultation of the same or a similar manuscript today. The Arabic manuscripts, in turn, were probably culled from even earlier sources. The first manuscript to be examined in this article is the Shams al-Ma'arif al-Kubra, attributed to one of the most famous Arab Muslim magicians, Ahmad bin Ali al-Buni, although it has been suggested to be a pseudepigraphic work composed during the early 14th century C.E.4 Whoever its compiler may have been, the book appears to be of a composite nature from a variety of sources, some

2 R. Ritner, The Mechanics qf Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. (Studies in Ancient Oriental 54; Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 1993). 3 Ibn Khaldun, Protegomenes d'Ebn Khaldoun: Texte arabe pub lie apres les manuscrits de !a Bibliotheque Imperiale par M. Qyatremere. Vol. 3 (Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1858) 128-29; W. Vycichl, "Un royaume dans un pot de lentilles. Une histoire de magie copte recueillie en 1936 a Farchout (Haute-Egypte). L'origine du mot hik 'magie'," in Melanges Adolphe Gutbub (Montpellier: Universite de Montpellier, 1984) 235. 4 'Alya' Shukrf, Al-Turiith al-Sha'bf al-Masrf .fi al-Maktabiiti al-'Orubiyya [= Popular Egyptian Culture in European Bookstores] Contemporary Sociology 24 (: Dar al-Kitab Publishers, 1979) 287. 5 P. Lory, "La magie des 1ettres dans 1e Shams al-Ma'arif d'al-Buni," Bulletin d'Etudes Orientales 39-40 (1987 -88) 98-99.