Horus, Isis and the Three Agrippas: Ancient Egyptian Gods in Coptic Charms
Starts on Sat, 19 Feb 2022 14:00 Greenwich Mean Time (UTC±0)
Tickets (£4 – £6) here.
Lecture with Dr Korshi Dosoo
About this event
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The last native Egyptian temple, that of of Isis in Philae, was officially closed ca. 536 CE, probably a hundred years after the cult itself had ceased, and the Egyptian population had become almost entirely Christian. Nonetheless, a small dossier of magical texts, written in Coptic and dated to between the fifth and ninth centuries, continue to use the Egyptian gods as characters in brief narrative spells, known as “charms”, which aim to heal diseases or cause people to fall in love. This talk will present these sources within their larger social context, looking at the evidence for continuity with practices dating back to the Middle Kingdom, as well as their adaptation into a new, Christian, environment.
About the speaker:
Dr. Korshi Dosoo is the junior research group leader of the project The Coptic Magical Papyri: Vernacular Religion in Late Antique and Early Islamic Egypt at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. Formerly ATER (lecturer) at the University of Strasbourg and post-doctoral researcher on the Labex RESMED project Les mots de la paix. His PhD thesis, ‘Rituals of Apparition on the Theban Magical Library’ was completed in 2015 at Macquarie University, Australia. His research focuses on magic and lived religion in Egypt from the Ptolemaic to Mamluk periods as revealed by papyrological and epigraphic sources.
https://www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de/
Header image: https://exhibitions.kelsey.lsa.umich.edu/art-science-healing/harpocrates1.php
