MITHRAISM and MAGIC Jaime Alvar Ezquerra 1. Introduction

CHAPTER FIFTEEN MITHRAISM AND MAGIC Jaime Alvar Ezquerra 1. Introduction: Magic, Religion and Mysteries Th e plethora of recent studies on Greek and Roman magic is but one expression of the growing scholarly interest in modes of relating to the supernatural outwith the control of institutions. I do not propose here to discuss the cultural factors underlying that interest, the tacit or unconscious infl uences that aff ect our ideological constructions of the past (and of course our own present). We should nevertheless at least be aware of that wider context, which inevitably infl uences both the choice to work in a particular fi eld and the type of arguments considered plausible and persuasive. Perceptions of past (and present) relationships with the supernatural are particularly subject to such invisible cultural infl uence. I start from the position that religion is one of the complex institutions that arise out of the process of state-formation.1 As such, it was from the beginning under the control of the various politico-social élites, and tended to be identifi ed with their interests. Cosmology and bodies of organised knowledge relating to the heavens and to the future, most obviously in Babylonia and Egypt, with their large profes- sional priesthoods, but also in Greece and at Rome, developed in this context. Th ese knowledge-practices were controlled by religious rules, and so by those who administered and interpreted them. Th e internal confl icts of the ruling group were, at any rate to some degree, refl ected in the divergences and contradictions within these bodies of knowledge. In the ancient Near-East, where magical practice was heavily institutionalised, it was primarily a matter of specially-qualifi ed priests 1 Alvar 2001, 165–168. A revised edition in English under the title Romanising Ori- ental Gods: Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the cults of Cybele, Isis and Mithras. RGRW 165 appeared in 2008 (= Alvar 2008). Th e fi nal version of this paper owes a good deal to the help of Richard Gordon, but the argument remains my responsibility. 520 jaime alvar ezquerra protecting or defending the King or superior individuals against attack by evil powers, or human enemies, whether these worked naturalisti- cally or by spiritual attack: we may think of the Egyptian defi nition of heka (who is also a goddess) as “the weapon given humans by the gods against the eff ect of events”, deployed through the skill of the wab-priests; or the role of the ašipu, exorcist-priest, in Babylonia.2 Th e negative use by human-beings of the same power to attack these fi gures was identifi ed as witchcraft ; defence against such attack was provided in Egypt by a variety of means, including the so-called magic ivories (apotropaea made of sawn hippopotamus-tusks) from the Mid- dle Kingdom, and in Babylonia by the offi cial maqlû-texts.3 Although they lacked an organised and self-conscious priestly caste, the Greek cities and Rome alike considered religious practice not sanctioned by the politico-religious élite more or less illegitimate. One aspect of this category was magic, which covered a heterogeneous set of beliefs and practices linking the individual with the supernatural through channels outside the established norms.4 When magic was identifi ed as a depository of uncontrolled religious thought and practice, its boundaries became blurred until it became a phenomenon that was diffi cult to understand and hard to categorise; the various classi- fi cations of Antiquity were no more generally valid than the changing criteria of today.5 Of course not all religious practice outside offi cial and legitimate private (family) cult was considered magical. In late-Republican and imperial Rome, for example, a specifi c category was negotiated for cults that lacked the institutional sanction of the college of the XVviri. Th ey were grouped together under the category of peregrina sacra, for- eign worship. But the boundary between peregrina sacra and magical practice was not clearly defi ned; indeed, the idea was that it should not 2 For Egypt see e.g. Étienne 2000, 13; Sauneron 1966, 30–34; Kákosy 1985, 25f.; Ritner 1993, 14–28; wab-priests: Koenig 1994, 21–34; for Babylonia, E. Reiner, La magie babylonienne, in Condominas 1966, 67–98. 3 H. Altenmüller, Die Apotropaia und die Götter Mittelägyptens (Munich 1965); Koenig 1994, 85–98; Kákosy 1985, 87 with 88 fi g. 24; Étienne 2000, 60 with Cat. no. 216; Babylonian witchcraft and the maqlû-texts: T. Abusch, Mesopotamian Witchcraft : Toward a History and Understanding of Babylonian Witchcraft Beliefs and Literature. Ancient Magic and Divination 5 (Leyden 2002); Hittite: M.-C. Trémouille, Les rituels magiques hittites: aspects formels et techniques, in Moreau-Turpin 1: 77–94. 4 Graf 1996; Bernand 1991, 41–155; Carastro 2006. 5 R.L. Gordon, Imagining Greek and Roman Magic, in Ankarloo/Clark 159–275 at 162f..

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