M. BLANCO WOMEN AND THE TRANSMISSION OF MAGICAL KNOWLEDGE.pdf

Emilio Suárez, Miriam Blanco,  Eleni Chronopoulou, Isabel Canzobre (Editores)

M AGI AGIKÈ KÈ TÉCHN TÉCHNE E Formación y consideración social del mago en el Mundo Antiguo

CLÁSICOS DYKINSON

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© Los autores Madrid, 2017 Imagen de cubierta: El escriba sagrado Uennefer  - Museo del Louvre (fotografía de E. Suárez)

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ÍNDICE PRESENTACIÓN ......................................................................................... 9 I. EL CONTEXTO RELIGIOSO, FILOSÓFICO, CULTURAL Y SOCIAL ............. 13 1.- Núria Torras, Funciones y habilidades del sacerdote puro de Sekhmet: rituales mágicos en el contexto del templo ................ 15 2.- Marco Antonio Santamaría, Valoración positiva de los magos y la magia en testimonios griegos de época clásica (Gorgias, papiro de Derveni y Platón)  ............................................ 33 3.- Giulia Sfameni, Il mago e i suoi clienti: rivelazione di saperi, epifania divina e arte magica .......................................................... 47 4.- Attilio Mastrocinque, Teaching magic. Simon the Magus and the spirit .......................................................................................... 65 5.- Aurelio Pérez Jiménez, La astrología como parte del curriculum del mago grecolatino ....................................................................... 75 6.- Miriam Blanco, Women and the transmission of magical knowledge in the greco-roman world. Rediscovering ancient witches (II) ......................................................................... 95 II. LOS PAPIROS MÁGICOS GRIEGOS. APRENDIZAJE, TRANSMISIÓN Y PRESENTACIÓN DE LA OPERACIÓN MÁGICA : ENTRE EL MISTERIO , LA TÉCNICA Y LA CIENCIA ..................................................................... 111

7.- Emilio Suárez de la Torre, La formación del mago: el testimonio de los papiros mágicos del egipto grecorromano .... 113 8.- Eleni Pachoumi, The magicians and their assimilation with the initiated into the mysteries in the Greek magical papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt ............................................................. 149 9.- Mariangela Monaca, A scuola di magia. Gli strumenti del mago tra papiri e gemme: rileggendo PGM  IV 2006-2139 .................... 159 10.- Isabel Canzobre, Magical amulets user’s guide: preparation, utilization and knowledge transmission in the PGM ..................... 177 11.- Michela Zago, L’apprendimento poetico: ricordando Omero....... 193 12.- Alberto Nodar, El aprendizaje y la escritura de la magia .............. 215 13.- Eleni Chronopoulou, De economía mágica................................... 225 BIBLIOGRAFÍA  ..................................................................................... 235

WOMEN AND THE TRANSMISSION OF MAGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD1. REDISCOVERING ANCIENT WITCHES (II)2 MIRIAM BLANCO CESTEROS [email protected]

The study of ancient magical female practitioners takes us, unavoidably, into the intersection of gender studies, ancient socio-political discourse and the problem of defining magic in the ancient world. Due to the scarcity of non-literary testimonies about women experts in sorcery, the information about ancient witches has to be inferred from indirect sources, that is, from literature. However, many scholars have rejected the validity of literary portrayals of sorceresses because of the undisputable interference that their gender and magic as a discourse of alterity have on the literary construction of these characters3. Obviously, the real women who practiced magic could not bring down the moon as the ancient authors claimed. Hence, the subsequent question is whether there was a real basis behind the ancient stereotypes. Were there actually women who practiced magic for a living? What were the sorceresses of the Greco-Roman world really like? Following an area of research conducted by scholars who accept the existence of a substantial number of magical purveyors, of both sexes, who offered ritual services in the ancient world, my aim in this article is to analyse the literary depiction of ancient witches in contrast with the information offered from direct sources on magic in order to clarify the image of these ancient women. In accordance with the nature of this volume, I will especially focus on those passages in which women appear involved in the transmission of magical lore which I will examine divid-

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This article has been written within the framework of the project FFI2014-57517-P, of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. I owe a special thanks to Professor A. Pérez Jiménez for his suggestions of texts and to S. Walker for her revision of the English text. This paper is the sequel to the research done for a piece of work published in 2015 in the volume Femina. Mujeres en la Historia, cf. BLANCO (2015a). The work of K. STRATTON (2007, 2014) on the study of gender construction in the discourse of magic in the Greco-Roman world is a fundamental tool on this topic. Moreover, it is also possible to include the work of Ch. FARAONE  (1998), summarized in FARAONE  (1999), that offers interesting conclusions. For women linked with magic and for its profusion of fonts and data, D ICKIE (2001) is also noteworthy.

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 Miriam Blanco Cesteros

ed in the literary and non-literary excerpts. The conclusions extracted from both groups will be contrasted at the end of the article. 1. WOMEN AND MAGIC IN GRECO-ROMAN SOURCES : A CROSSROADS OF PROBLEMS

The bond between magic and women is a believe thoroughly widespread in the Mediterranean World, from Classical Greece onwards4. In fact, just a glance at Greco-Roman literature leaves us with the impression that the most common practitioner of magic in the Ancient World was female one. However, our current understanding of the phenomenon of ancient magic has proved that this strong literary association between women and magic does not constitute a true reflection of contemporary reality. Archaeological testimonies of magic, such as curses inscribed on durable materials (katadesmoi , defixiones), show that a great part of the defigens5 were actually men6 and only male magicians signed the so-called Greek  Magical Papyri7. The accusation of women as “real” witches were, actually, very rare in Greece8, as the analysis of the so-called “judicial prayers” 9demonstrates and, as far as the Roman world goes 10, conviction in court for magic reveals that 4

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According to STRATTON (2007: 46-64), it is in the context of the Athenian stage of 5 th century B.C. where the determining “feminization” of magic occurs: there, for the first time, is it found to be associated with women, gender subversion and uncontrolled passions. However, this phenomenon was not restricted to the Greco-Roman world as Rabbinic literature shows, cf. STRATTON (2007: 143-176) and LESSES (2014: 71-107). The person on behalf of whom a curse was written. According to the account offered by FARAONE  (1998: 43, n. 9), STRATTON (2007: 24) has calculated that approximately 86% of the preserved erotic binding spells were performed by men. Some similar conclusions can be found in GAGER (1992: 80-81) and WINKLER (1990: 72), who states: «the norm for such procedures is male agency and female victimage». These are a large corpora of texts with instructions on carrying out magical procedures which comprises a complex Greco-Egyptian magical tradition. These magical handbooks are written in Greek, Coptic and Demotic language and come from a wide time span, from the 1 st century BC –the oldest dated- to the 5th century AC, but the majority are dated in the Roman Imperial period. The Greek magical papyri discovered up until 1924 have been collected and edited by K. Preisendanz in Papyri Graecae Magicae Die griechischen Zauberpapyri. I will refer to these papyri by the initials PGM , from now on, and will cite them in accordance with the papyrus number that they have been given in this edition. This is the main conclusion reached by F. GRAF (2014: 406) after examining the extant archaeological records of judicial prayers in which magical attacks are reported. The name “judicial prayers” was proposed by H.S. VERSNEL (1991) for an ambiguous type of request between magic and religion which is generally attested through inscriptions that formulate a claim of  justice to the gods for a grievance not solved satisfactorily by the human courts. Its categorization as magical is not clear: VERSNEL (1991: 80-81) considers them to be a “borderline kind of prayer”, that is to say, not completely magical, while FARAONE  (1998: 81) does not hesitate to classify them as magical using the term “revenge curses” to refer to them. As far as trials of magic in ancient Greece are concerned, the existence of a crime of μαγεία is difficult to prove. In Classic and Hellenistic Greece existing testimonies of people involved in magical accusations indicate the prosecution of ἀσ8βεια  (“impiety”), which includes a wide range of religious offenc-

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both women and men were involved equally in these kinds of trials11. Consequently, in the light of this evidence, the literary portrait of female sorcery that literature offers has been questioned by many scholars that, like K. Stratton, have tried, on the one hand, to disassemble the woman-magic connection or, on the other hand, to explain it12. At this point, any study on female magical practitioners in the ancient world must take a stance on two essential questions raised from what I have  just exposed: in first place, whether the existence of witches is accepted and, second, whether the literary depictions are reliable sources to study them from. Regarding the first question, for scholars like G. Luck (1999: 123) there is no doubt that in ancient communities there were women who were skilled in magic, whom people went to but were simultaneously afraid of. Plautus’  Miles Gloriosus gives us a noteworthy list of Roman female ritual practitioners in the liminal fringe between religion and magic 13 ; we have nothing similar referring to the Greek world but the analysis of literary and non-literary testimonies offers a comparable list of Greek female ritual purveyors14. As in the case of male magicians, these non-official religious practitioners, sometimes wandering, generally foreigners 15, were, definitely, the basis of where “sorcerers and witches” of common belief came from. So, as far as the first question is concerned, I accept the existence of real “witches” or “sorceresses” in the ancient world16; by these two terms I refer to

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es, or harm caused by 9άρμακα (see below n.14), cf. COLLINS (2001) and GORDON (1999: 268-269) for an exhaustive bibliography. See as an example the count of venenarii et malefici trials carried out in the reign of Tiberius ( Chron.  Ann. Cccliv MGH  IX, p.145), cf. DICKIE (2001: 149). For bibliographic references see above, n.3. In this excerpt Periplectomenus’ wife mentions the  praecantrix, “the woman who performs incantations”, the coniectrix, “the woman who interprets dreams”, the hariola, “the inspired prophetess”, the hauruspica, “the woman who inspects entrails” and quae supercilio spicit  “the woman who interprets movements of the eyebrows” (Plaut.  Mil. 692-4). The first three are female versions of known Roman male ritual practitioners, cf. DICKIE (2001: 156-158). Perhaps the best known Greek female ritual practitioner is the 9αρμακίς, literally “the woman who purveys 9άρμακα”, a wide concept which includes medicinal potions, love philtres and poisons. However, this service was not exclusively offered by women according to Theoc.  Id . II. 162. According to Demosthenes and his scholiast we know the name of two women that apparently conducted mystery ceremonies not accepted by Athenian law (Glaucothea - Dem.19.281- and Nino - Schol. In Dem 19.281 and I.  Ap.267, if the identification is correct). In Men. Phasma, 52-57 it mentions a group of women who do purifications; this is the same kind of ritual done by the women depicted in the mime’s fragment preserved in PSI 1416 A. In  DT Aud. 1 the defigens mentions a paid woman that could be summoned by people and who literally “went to the sanctuary to curse the life of someone”: ἐκάλεσα γυναBκα ἐπ( τG %ερόν τρία )μιμναBα διδο