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The Threat of Headless Beings: Constructing the Demonic in Christian Egypt

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Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits

Part of the book series: Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic ((PHSWM))

Abstract

Two exorcistic charms from late antique Egypt appeal to the Christian Trinity and archangels to relieve affliction from an unusual category of demon called “headless,” associated with Osiris in earlier times. This paper addresses the afterlife of Osiris traditions in Christian times and the role of local monastic scribes in shaping the popular experience of local spirits.

Abbreviations used in the notes: GMPT = Betz ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation; PGM = Preisendanz ed., Papyri Graecae Magicae; ACM = Meyer and Smith eds., Ancient Christian Magic.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, Chap. 2. See in general Douglas, Purity and Danger, 94–113. As applied in recent historical/anthropological studies see Stewart, Demons and the Devil, 15, 98, 107–108, 114–115, 172–173, 189–190, and Flint, Rise of Magic, 102, 147–57 (esp. 153–154).

  2. 2.

    Favret-Saada, Deadly Words; see also Briggs, Witches and Neighbors. For antiquity see especially Frankfurter, “Dynamics of Ritual Expertise” and Gordon, “From Substances to Texts.”

  3. 3.

    See in general, Kropp, Ausegewählte koptische Zaubertexte, vol. 3; Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, passim; Siegfried Richter, “Bemerkungen zu magischen Elementen”; and Van der Vliet, “Literature, Liturgy, Magic.”

  4. 4.

    Frankfurter, “Syncretism,” 351–564; Brakke, Demons, 236–239; Aufrère, “LÉgypte traditionelle.”

  5. 5.

    PGM (1931 ed.) 2: 204, ##P15a–b.

  6. 6.

    Tblisi, Museum Dzanasia 24, ed. Zereteli, Papyri russischer und georgischer, #24, 164–166; ed. Preisendanz, PGM 22 #P15a, 223–224; tr. ACM 23 (emended). My gratitude to Tamara Zhghenti for providing me with an image of this papyrus.

  7. 7.

    London, University College [lost], publ. Quibell, “A Greek Christian Invocation”; ed. Preisendanz, PGM 22, #P15b, 224; tr. ACM 24 (emended). I am indebted to Alice Stevenson, Nikolaos Gonis, and Stephen Quirke of University College London for their extensive, if fruitless, efforts to track down this papyrus.

  8. 8.

    Frankfurter, “Syncretism,” 351–564; Brakke, Demons, 236–238.

  9. 9.

    For Antony, see Rubenson, Letters of St. Antony, 86–88, 139–141, 216–224; and cf. Palladius, Lausiac History 15.1; 22, on exorcistic disciples of Antony. For Athanasius, see his Life of Antony. In general see Brakke, Demons.

  10. 10.

    Athanasius, Life of Antony, 88; History of the Monks in Egypt, 15; Jerome, Life of Hilarion, 28. See Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, Chap. 3.

  11. 11.

    Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 1.35, 38 refers to dreams of headless people.

  12. 12.

    See Stewart, Demons and the Devil, Chap. 3. On protracted diagnostic conversations on supernatural possession and affliction see Caciola, Discerning Spirits, and Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit.

  13. 13.

    Preisendanz, Akephalos, 1–11. Americans know best Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1819), about a ghostly headless horseman in a small town in New York State. Irving’s story incorporates various stories of headless monsters from northern Europe and Ireland.

  14. 14.

    The Testament of Solomon is often taken as an early Jewish text, but its manuscripts are considerably late, and there are few indications within the versions of a pre-Christian form. See Klutz, Rewriting, and Schwarz, “Reconsidering.”

  15. 15.

    T. Sol. 9.1–2, 5–6, tr. Duling, “Testament of Solomon,” 971. Delatte, “Akephalos Theos,” brings together two Greek texts from the Testament of Solomon and an early modern exorcism, 234–238.

  16. 16.

    Darnell, Enigmatic Netherworld Books, 115–16. Cf. Delatte, “Akephalos Theos,” 232–234; Preisendanz, Akephalos, 12–13, 49.

  17. 17.

    On the social context of the Greek Magical Papyri see Ritner, “Egyptian Magical Practice”; Frankfurter, “Consequences of Hellenism”; and Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites.

  18. 18.

    PGM V.98–139, tr. Aune, GMPT 103 (emended).

  19. 19.

    PGM VII.233–245, tr. Grese, GMPT 123. Compare PGM VIII.64–110; CII.1–17; and Borghouts, Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts, #134 (=P. Harris 8.5–9.5), with Kákosy, “Der Gott Bes,” and Frankfurter, “Ritual Expertise,” 122–125.

  20. 20.

    E.g., Nock, “A Vision of Mandulis Aion,” esp. 374–377.

  21. 21.

    E.g., ACM 62.35ff; 22.

  22. 22.

    See Frankfurter, “Demon Invocations,” and “Master-Demons, Local Spirits”; Lucarelli, “Demonology.” On Latin America see Cervantes, Devil in the New World.

  23. 23.

    ACM 64 = Lond. Or. Ms. 5525, tr. Smith, ACM 121.

  24. 24.

    See Edwards, Oracular Amuletic Decrees.

  25. 25.

    PGM P10 = ACM 20, tr. Meyer, ACM 44–45.

  26. 26.

    Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, Chap. 2; Gordon, “‘What’s in a List?’”

  27. 27.

    PGM P3 = ACM 26, tr. Meyer, ACM 49–50; compare ACM 25 = PGM P2.

  28. 28.

    Compare Mark 3: 22, where the author imagines people in Jesus’s time accusing him of expelling demons by appeal to a chief demon.

  29. 29.

    PGM P2 = ACM 25 concludes with “St. Phocas is here!” suggesting some connection between the scribe and the Christian shrine of St. Phocas in Oxyrynchus.

  30. 30.

    See Stewart, Demons and the Devil, 180–191; Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate, 14–15, and “Scorpion/Demon,” esp. 14.

  31. 31.

    See Ammianus Marcellinus, History 19.12; Dunand, “La consultation oraculaire en Égypte tardive”; Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 129–130, 169–174.

  32. 32.

    Life of Moses of Abydos, ed. Till, Koptische Heiligen-, 53, tr. Moussa, “Coptic Literary Dossier,” 83. See also Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 128–131.

  33. 33.

    Although compare Emmel, “Ithyphallic Gods,” and Frankfurter, “Illuminating the Cult of Kothos,” 178–180, for examples of the gods (respectively) Min and Agathos Daimon/Shai preserved in Coptic texts.

  34. 34.

    Life of Theodore of Sykeon. 16, tr. Dawes and Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints, 97–98.

  35. 35.

    Kotansky, Greek Magical Amulets (P. Col. 22), #33.

  36. 36.

    B. M. 10083r, tr. Edwards, Oracular Amuletic Decrees, 1: 4–5.

  37. 37.

    See in general Connerton, How Societies Remember.

  38. 38.

    See Frankfurter, “The Laments of Horus,” referring to ACM #47–49, 72, 82.

  39. 39.

    ACM #43 = Michigan Coptic ms. 136, 5–7.

  40. 40.

    PGM II.11–12, 166–175.

  41. 41.

    Akephalos iconography: PGM XXXVI.49–65 = P. Oslo I.1, on which see Eitrem, Magical Papyri, 46–48.

  42. 42.

    Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, tr. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 257, as quoted in Bennett, Vibrant Matter, xii.

  43. 43.

    Quibell, “A Greek Christian Invocation.”

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Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this chapter were presented to the Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology Program, UC Berkeley (3/2016) and the Brown University Religious Studies Seminar (3/2016), with special thanks to the discerning suggestions of Nancy Khalek.

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    David Frankfurter

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    Michael Ostling

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Frankfurter, D. (2018). The Threat of Headless Beings: Constructing the Demonic in Christian Egypt. In: Ostling, M. (eds) Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58520-2_2

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