Category: Ancient world

An online translation of the Greek magical papyri

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At Abnormal Interests there is an interesting poston the find of the Greek magical papyri.  The anecdote is taken from H. D. Betz translation of all these papyri, which someone has uploaded to ScribD (Hans Dieter Betz, ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.)   

This is fortunate in many ways, for so obscure a subject would otherwise hardly escape the confines of major academic libraries.  The papyri themselves were discovered in the 19th century by an adventurer.

… the discovery of the Greek magical papyri was often still is the outcome of sheer luck and almost incredible coincidences. In the case of the major portion of the collection, the so-called Anastasi collection, the discovery and rescue is owed to the efforts (and, if one may use the term, cooperation) of two individuals separated by more than a thousand years: the modern collector d’Anastasi and the original collector at Thebes.

In the nineteenth century, there was among the “diplomatic” representatives at the court in Alexandria a man who called himself Jean d’Anastasi (17801-1857). Believed to be Armenian by birth, he ingratiated himself enough with the pasha to become the consular representative of Sweden. It was a time when diplomats and military men often were passionate collectors of antiquities, and M. d’Anastasi happened to be at the right place at the right time. He succeeded in bringing together large collections of papyri from Egypt, among them sizable magical books, some of which he said he had obtained in Thebes. These collections he shipped to Europe, where they were auctioned off and bought by various libraries: the British Museum in London, the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Louvre in Paris, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, and the Rijksmuseum in Leiden. Another papyrus was acquired by Jean Francois Mimaut (1774-1837), also a diplomat, whose acquisition ended up in the Bibliotheque Nationale (PGM III). Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about the circumstances of the actual findings. But it is highly likely that many of the papyri from the Anastasi collection came from the same place, perhaps a tomb or a temple library. If this assumption is correct, about half a dozen of the best-preserved and largest extant papyri may havc come from the collection of one man in Thebes. He is of course unknown to us, but we may suppose that he collected the magical material for his own use. Perhaps he was more than a magician. We may attribute his almost systematic collcctions of magica to a man who was also a scholar, probably philosophically inclined, as well as a bibliophile and archivist concerned about the preservation of this material.

The references for these statements may be read in Betz.  They are to works that few have seen; but which, perhaps, may now be online and accessible to us all.

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Some notes on David Elkington

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Jordan Lead Codices continue to attract my interest.  This evening I went looking for an email address for the gentleman, with a view to asking him some questions.  It is, after all, entirely possible that he is the victim of a fraud, rather than its perpetrator.  The latter, indeed, seems unlikely to me.

I didn’t find an email address, but I did find a biography at the literary agent, Curtis Brown, here.

David Elkington is the author of In the Name of the Gods, the highly acclaimed academic thesis on the resonance and acoustical origins of religion. David is primarily an Egyptologist, specializing in Egypt-Palestinian links that have inevitably drawn him into the field of Biblical studies.

Between 1987 and 1990 he trained under Julia Samson, curator of the Petrie Museum, University of London, specializing in the Amarnan period of Egypt (c. 1500 BC), and also under Prof. Christine el Mahdy at the British School of Egyptology. He has co-hosted academic tours of the major ancient sites of Egypt and has been a member of the Egypt Exploration Society, the Palestine Exploration Fund and well as a fundraising Vice-Chairman of the Oxford China Scholarship Fund Working Group. He has lectured at universities all over the world and written many papers on ancient history and linguistics.

Interesting.

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Lead codices are fake

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I mentioned a few days ago the find of a stash of lead books, supposedly from the time of Christ, in Jordan. 

One of the few people to see the collection is David Elkington, a scholar of ancient religious archaeology who is heading a British team trying to get the lead books safely into a Jordanian museum.

Elkington, however, may not be a reputable scholar, at least according to blogger Clayboy here.

Today Jim Davila gives a damning email from Peter Thonemann, of Wadham College, Oxford, here.  It turns out that Elkington approached Thonemann last year, asking for information about one of the codices, on copper.  And he got it; clear evidence of forgery.  Unfortunately it seems that Mr. Elkington did not heed the warning.

Key excerpts:

On 15 September 2010, I received the following email out of the blue from a certain David Elkington …

“… one of the copper codices that brings me to you. … It has an inscription in Greek along the top. A putative investigation has failed to find the meaning, dialect or type of Greek used and we are seeking to find an expert who might help in determining what it says. Would you have the time and the knowledge to be able to help?”

I received on the 13 October the following three photographs of this ‘copper codex’ from Mr Elkington … I replied later that same day…

“The text was incised by someone who did not know the Greek language, since he does not distinguish between the letters lambda and alpha: both are simply represented, in each of the texts, by the shape Λ.  The text literally means ‘without grief, farewell! Abgar also known as Eision’. This text, in isolation, is meaningless.  However, this text corresponds precisely to line 2 of the Greek text of a bilingual Aramaic/Greek inscription published by J.T. Milik, …

‘For Selaman, excellent and harmless man, farewell!  Abgar, also known as Eision, son of Monoathos, constructed this tomb for his excellent son (i.e. Selaman), in the third year of the province’. 

This is a stone tombstone from Madaba in Jordan, precisely dated to AD 108/9, on display in the Archaeological Museum in Amman.  

The text on your bronze tablet, therefore, makes no sense in its own right, but has been extracted unintelligently from another longer text …  The longer text from which it derives is a perfectly ordinary tombstone from Madaba in Jordan which happens to have been on display in the Amman museum for the past fifty years or so.  The text on your bronze tablet is repeated, in part, in three different places, meaningless in each case.  

The only possible explanation is that the text on the bronze tablet was copied directly from the inscription in the museum at Amman by someone who did not understand the meaning of the text of the inscription, but was simply looking for a plausible-looking sequence of Greek letters to copy.  He copied that sequence three times, in each case mixing up the letters alpha and lambda.

This particular bronze tablet is, therefore, a modern forgery, produced in Jordan within the last fifty years.  I would stake my career on it. 

And Jim adds:

At least one of David Elkington’s metal codices (a copper one) is a forgery. It seems very unlikely indeed, therefore, that any of them are genuine.

Which sums up my feelings too.

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“According to Realencyclopaedie, the inscription Chrestos is to be seen on a Mithras relief in the Vatican”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I love modern legends.  They have been the stimulus for much of what I have done online.  The effort to research, access and document has given me many happy hours.

This morning I was sitting in front of the monitor, looking for inspiration and stimulation.  Then a Google Groups search on Mithras brought up this gem:

Christ: The Greeks used both the word Messias (a transliteration) and Christos (a translation) for the Hebrew Mashiach (Anointed). The word Christos is far more acceptable to some Pagans who worship Chreston and Chrestos. According to The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, the word Christos was easily confused with the common Greek proper name Chrestos, meaning “good.” According to a French theological dictionary, it is absolutely beyond doubt that Christus and Chrestus, and Christiani and Chrestiani were used indifferently by the profane Christian authors of the first two centuries AD The word Christianos is a Latinism, being contributed neither by the Jews nor by the Christians themselves. The word was introduced from one of three origins: the Roman police, the Roman populace, or an unspecified Pagan origin. Its infrequent use in the New Testament suggests a Pagan origin. According to Realencyclopaedie, the inscription Chrestos is to be seen on a Mithras relief in the Vatican. According to Christianity and Mythology, Osiris, the Sun God of Egypt, was reverenced as Chrestos..

The only “reference” for all these claims is to a post in a closed forum. 

If you search around the web for this stuff, you will find it repeated endlessly.  Some even add after the bold phrase “(I’ve seen it myself)” although since this too is repeated, one wonders just who the author was.

One claim caught my eye: the claim about the RE.  After much searching, I found a slightly different version here:

Who was this Chrestos or Chreston with which Christos became confused with?

We have already seen that Chrestos was a common Greek proper name, meaning “good.” Further we see in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopaedie, under “Chrestos,” that the inscription Chrestos is to be seen on a Mithras relief in the Vatican. We also read in J. M. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, p. 331, that Osiris, the Sun-deity of Egypt, was reverenced as Chrestos. We also read of the heretic Gnostics who used the name Chreistos.

OK, so what does the RE say about “Chrestos”? 

Well, in the 6th half-volume (band III.2) the entry appears in columns 2449-2450, giving a list of people known by that name:

  1. A praetorian prefect under Alexander Severus (Dio. epit. book 80, 2:2), also given as prefect of Egypt in a papyrus fragment, where his name appears as Geminus Chrestus.
  2. A Roman geographer, mentioned by John the Lydian in De Mensibus IV 68 (p. 98ff of the Bonn edition) as talking about the Nile.
  3. An officer under Constans (Aurelius Victor, epit. 41, 22) ca. 350 AD.
  4. An African grammarian, ca. 357, mentioned in Jerome’s Chronicle under AA 2374.  But one manuscript gives the name as Charistus.
  5. A pupil of Herodes Atticus at Byzantion, working as a sophist and teacher in the second half of the second century. (Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, p. 98, l.15 of Kayser’s edition).

And after that, we find the following entry:

6) Auf Grund der Inschrift eines Mithrasreliefs im Vatican (Cumont Mitras inscr. nr. 39; mon. fig. nr. 31) Χρῆστος πατὴρ καὶ Γαῦρος ἐποίησαν früher für einen Künstler gehalten. Doch bezeichnet, wie zuerst Brunn Künstlergesch. I 611 gesehen hat, ἐποίησαν nur die Weihung, πατὴρ im Mithraskult ein priesterlicher Titel ist. Kaibel IGI 1272. Loewy Inschr. griech. Bildh. 457. [C. Robert.] 

I.e.

6) On the base of an inscription of a Mithras relief in the Vatican (Cumont, Mithras, inscrip. 39; mon. fig. 31) Χρῆστος πατὴρ καὶ Γαῦρος ἐποίησαν was previously taken for the name of an artist.  But it is now recognised, as Brunn saw in Künstlergesch. I 611, that ἐποίησαν refers to the consecration, and πατὴρ is a title for a priest in the Mithras cult. Kaibel IGI 1272. Loewy Inschr. griech. Bildh. 457. [C. Robert]

Indeed the text says:

Χρῆστος πατὴρ καὶ Γαῦρος ἐποίησαν

Chrestus the Pater and Gaurus made [this].

Let’s look at Cumont.  I found the stuff in vol. 2 of Textes et Monumentes, in p.211 in the section on Rome, which I had great difficulty navigating.

31. Bas-relief de marbre blanc [L. 0.71m, H. 0.41m, Ep. 0.05m], conservé au musée du Vatican, Galleria scoperta, n° 416 [doit être déplacé].  

Cité : Zoega, p. 149, n° 15; cf. Kaibel, ISI, n° 1272.

Mithra tauroctone dans la grotte avec le chien, le serpent, le scorpion et le corbeau, mais sans les dadophores. Dans les coins supérieurs, à gauche, Sol sur un quadrige, à droite Luna sur un char traîné par deux taureaux. Dans les coins inférieurs, de chaque côté, un cyprès grossièrement dessiné. En dessous l’inscription n° 39.

Brisé en deux morceaux, mais sans restauration importante. Travail médiocre.

And the inscription itself is on p.100

39. Kaibel, ISI, 1272. — Voyez le monument n° 31.

Χρῆστος πατὴρ καὶ Γαῦρος ἐποίησαν.

Non videntur artifices esse Chrestus et Gaurus cf. Brunn, Hist. art., I, 611, qui cum recte iam Rochettius vidisset Chrestum fuisse patrem Mithrae, verbum ἐποίησαν ita explicabat ut esset consacraverunt [Kaibel].

It’s a tauroctony, in other words, a relief showing Mithras killing the bull, which has the inscription beneath.  All it shows is that a priest named Chrestus set up the relief.  It happens to be in the Vatican museum, but has no ancient connection specified with that location.

As ever, once we know the facts and return to the context of the original claim, we see that the reader is being misled by a statement which, literally true, is nevertheless  guaranteed to mislead everyone to suppose that “Chrestos” is another name for “Mithras”.

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Cybele in the fables of Phaedrus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was looking at the talk page of the Wikipedia Cybele article and a reference to Phaedrus 3:20 caught my eye.  I thought this must be the fabulist, rather than the dialogue of Plato, and so it proved. 

A translation of all the fables is at Gutenberg here.  Apparently there is some question as to how to number the first fables of book IV, or whether they are at the end of book III.   But here is what is clearly intended:

THE ASS AND THE PRIESTS OF CYBELE.

He who has been born to ill luck, not only passes an unhappy life, but even after death the cruel rigour of destiny pursues him.

The Galli, priests of Cybele, were in the habit, on their begging excursions, of leading about an Ass, to carry their burdens. When he was dead with fatigue and blows, his hide being stripped off, they made themselves tambourines therewith. Afterwards, on being asked by some one what they had done with their favourite, they answered in these words: “He fancied that after death he would rest in quiet; but see, dead as he is, fresh blows are heaped upon him.”

The notes on this are:

Priests of Cybele)—Ver. 4. During the Festival of Cybele, the Galli or eunuch-priests of the Goddess went about with an image of her seated on an ass, and beating a tambourine, for the purpose of making a collection to defray the expenses of the worship. They were called by the Greeks μητραγύρται, “Collectors for the Mother.” See the Fasti of Ovid, B. iv., l. 350, vol. i., p. 149, of Bohn’s Translation.Tambourines)—Ver. 7. “The tympana,” which were almost exactly similar to our tambourines, were covered with the skin of asses or of oxen, and were beaten with the hand or a small stick.

Not that this helps the perplexed Wikipedian, but it is a useful reference all the same.

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Arrian “Ars Tactica” on Cybele and Attis at Rome

Posted on by Roger Pearse

N. S. Gill writes the following here:

A pine tree was made to represent the dead Attis for the day of the entrance of the tree.

The reference given is “The Cannophori and the March Festival of Magna Mater,” by Duncan Fishwick. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97. (1966), pp. 193-202.  This states:

Certainly the entry of the pine tree decked out to represent the dead Attis and the startling rites that followed two days later are ceremonies of a funerary festival that ended with the washing of Cybele’s image in the Almo; cf. Arrian, Tactica 33.4 (ed. A. G. Roos): ἡ Φρυγία τιμᾶται ἐκ Πεσσινοῦντος ἐλθοῦσα, καὶ τὸ πένθος τὸ ἀμφὶ τῷ Ἄττῃ Φρύγιον ὄν ἐν Ῥώμῃ πενθεῖται, καὶ τὸ λουτρὸν δ’ ἡ Ῥέα, ἐφ̕ οὗ τοῦ πένθους λήγει, τῶν Φρυγῶν νόμῳ λοῦται.

I admit that I had not heard of this work of Arrian, which never seems to have been translated.  It was edited by Roos as part of a 2 volume collected works.  The Greek seems to say:

“The Phrygian [goddess] from Pessinus is honoured, and the mourning for the sake of Attis the Phrygian is bewailed in Rome, and” … something about washing?  What I don’t see is anything about how the pine tree represents Attis.

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Origen on unnatural vice

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was reading through Origen’s Dialogue with Heracleides and came across the following interesting comment on sin:

The things that are liable to punishment, therefore, are not merely the terrible and fearful sins which should not even be named, whether sins of life or of thought, but also sins commonly thought to be of less importance.

That is why, it seems, the apostle puts side by side with acts which are abominable, infamous, and revolting (if I may so say) things which are regarded by most people as of little significance.

What does he say? “Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate men, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor revilers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”

You see that together with such gross sinners as the homosexual person, the effeminate man, the adulterer, the fornicator, he enumerates the drunkard, the reviler—sins thought by all of us to be of small account, so that we may be taught that it is not for the great sins alone that we are excluded from the kingdom of God, but also for these which are commonly supposed to be of minor significance.

Therefore, let us not revile, nor be drunkards, nor extort, nor steal, nor do anything wrong, even if we are “deceived.”

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Scrolls and lead codices?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

According to the BBC website,

A group of 70 or so “books”, each with between five and 15 lead leaves bound by lead rings, was apparently discovered in a remote arid valley in northern Jordan somewhere between 2005 and 2007. A flash flood had exposed two niches inside the cave, one of them marked with a menorah or candlestick, the ancient Jewish religious symbol. A Jordanian Bedouin opened these plugs, … the Jordanian government … claims they were smuggled into Israel by another Bedouin. The Israeli Bedouin who currently holds the books … 

The books, or “codices”, were apparently cast in lead, before being bound by lead rings. Their leaves – which are mostly about the size of a credit card – contain text in Ancient Hebrew, most of which is in code. …

One of the few people to see the collection is David Elkington, a scholar of ancient religious archaeology who is heading a British team trying to get the lead books safely into a Jordanian museum.

Elkington, however, may not be a reputable scholar, at least according to blogger Clayboy here.

Another blogger has more details here.

The owner of the cache is a Bedouin named Hassan Saeda who lives in the village of Um-al-Ghanam in the north of Israel,according to the Sunday Times. He is believed to have obtained them after they were discovered in northern Jordan.

Two samples were sent to a laboratory in England where they were examined by Peter Northover, head of the materials science-based archaeology group. The verdict was inconclusive without more tests, but he said the composition was ‘consistent with a range of ancient lead.’

Larry Hurtado comments here.

The writing is reported as some kind of Hebrew but coded.  Until the items are competently read, we don’t even know what their contents are.   The items are miniature codices, of a size that suggests private usage, and, so far as I know, suggests a date much later than the first century (there seems to have been an upswing in the production of miniature codices from ca. 3rd century CE onward). 

Finally, the incidence of the forgery of artefacts is so great that any responsible scholar must express profound hesitation about making any judgement on such items until they have been properly analysed.  Especially in light of the “Jesus bone-box” drama, we might all take a few deep breaths and simply call for the items to be put into the public domain for competent study before more rash and pointless claims are proffered.

What we need, clearly, is a team of reputable scholars to examine the things.  There is real money being demanded, apparently, as in all such cases.  We all know that Israel is the centre of a great deal of forgery, doubtless because of the combination of an excellent system of education, ready access to the best references, and a large population of groups like bedouin who are not especially noted for high moral standards towards non-members of the group.

Let us hope the find is genuine.  Let us hope, further, that it is significant.  Like Larry, I suspect it is not Christian but Jewish, and, if genuine, somewhat later in date than is suggested.

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Still more on the collectio avellana

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have just become aware via this site that quite a number of the letters in the Collectio Avellana, a mass of 243 papal and imperial letters of the 5-6th centuries, may exist in English.  There is a three volume collection by P. R. Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church, 3 volumes (London: SPCK, 1966), which lists a good many of the first 50 as translated (in the rightmost column of the table).

Of course the question is whether letter 100, on the Lupercalia, is one of them!  If it is, I may need to get some of these Latin translation people at work on something else.  Maybe some letters of St. Jerome or something.

I was intending to go to Oxford tomorrow, but perhaps a trip to Cambridge and some library time might be a better option.

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Dies sanguinis – what do we know about this?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are some pretty adventurous claims out there, about the Roman holiday of the “dies sanguinis” or “day of blood”.   This article from About.com is rather better than most, in that it is referenced, but it includes one of the odder claims I have seen:

In ancient Roman history, the 24th of March (VIII Kal Apriles) was the Dies sanguinis ‘day of blood,’ possibly a precursor of Good Friday.

Today I have been attempting to find out what, if anything, the ancient sources actually tell us.  I even looked in the RealEncyclopadie in vain.

In the Chronography of 354, part 6 (the Philocalian calendar), I recall an entry for the 24th March, IX kal. April. — sanguem.

22 H D A XI ARBOR·INTRAT
23   E B X TVBILVSTRIVM
24   F C IX SANGVEM     DIES·AEGYPTIACVS
25 I G D VIII HILARIA

Web searches suggest a festival of Bellona.  Others suggest that this is the day on which the priests of Cybele castrated themselves.  So … what are the facts?

Looking at Duncan Fishwick, “The Cannophori and the March Festival of Magna Mater”, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97 (1966), pp. 193-202, we get something on p.201:

The earliest direct allusion to the dies sanguinisis in connection with the death of Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 18o (Tertullian, Apolog. 25), but a passage in Valerius Flaccus (ob. A.D. 92 or 93) seems to make clear reference to the sanguinary rites of the day as early as the Flavian period (Argonautica. 239-42):

sic ubi Mygdonios planctus sacer abluit Almo
laetaque iam Cybele festaeque per oppida taedae
quis modo tam saevos adytis fluxisse cruores
cogitet aut ipsi qui iam meminere ministri?

With this may be compared a text of Martial (ca. A.D. 40-104) suggesting that the lavatio served also to purge the instruments used on the dies sanguinis (3.47.1-2):

Capena grandi porta qua pluit gutta
Phrygiumque Matris Almo qua lavat ferrum.

OK.  Let’s turn those quotes into English.  Tertullian, Apologeticum 25:5 is online here. 

[5]  Why, too, even in these days the Mater Magnahas given a notable proof of her greatness which she has conferred as a boon upon the city; when, after the loss to the State of Marcus Aurelius at Sirmium, on the sixteenth before the Kalends of April, that most sacred high priest of hers was offering, a week after, impure libations of blood drawn from his own arms, and issuing his commands that the ordinary prayers should be made for the safety of the emperor already dead.

Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, book 7 contains this:

And just as the anger of the mournful Mother29rends every year the frenzied Phrygians, or as Bellona lacerates the long-haired eunuchs,…

29. Cybele mourning for Attis; Bellona, goddess of war, whose priestesses and votaries, eunuchs called Bellonarii, cut themselves with knives at her festival (Juvenal, 4. 123; Lucan, 1. 565).

But book 8 is our reference:

So when the holy Almo washes away Mygdonian sorrows,10 and Cybele now is glad and festal torches gleam in the city streets, who would think that cruel wounds have lately gushed in the temples? or when of the votaries themselves remember them?

10. The festival of Cybele, the Great Mother, on March 27th (Ovid, Fasti4. 337); the image of the goddess was washed in the Almo, a tributary of the Tiber.

Martial, book 3, epigram 47:

Yonder, Faustinus, where the Capene Gate drips with large drops, and where the Almo cleanses the Phrygian sacrificial knives of the Mother of the Gods, …

Michelle Salzman’s On Roman Time is accessible to me and page 167 says:

The mourning became more violent on the following day, 24 March, Sanguem, when the devotees flagellated themselves until they bled, sprinkling the altars and effigy with their blood. This was also the day when certain devotees of the goddess, carried away by their emotion, would perform self-castration. During the “sacred night” of the twenty-fourth, Attis was ritually laid to rest in his grave and the new galli were inducted into the priesthood(presumably symbolizing the god’s rebirth); at dawn, then, a day of rejoicing Hilaria could begin.

Note the lack of footnotes, tho. 

And so it goes on.  How do we know that this day is associated with these events?  Which source says so?

I suspect that we are looking at the backwash of some early 20th century textbook, in which the statement was made as a theory to explain these references, and has thereafter been taken as fact.  Perhaps it is sound.  Perhaps not.  It would be interesting to know its origins.

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