The examples we will be discussing today, though, are much later [than the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts]. From between the fifth and twelfth centuries CE survive about three dozen amulets of a distinctive type, consisting of small pieces of papyrus, parchment, or paper on which a simple image of a scorpion has been drawn, and surrounded by text which invokes superhuman powers against these creatures, or commands them to leave. We find these written in all of the major languages used in Egypt in this period – Greek, Coptic, Arabic, and Hebrew – suggesting that the use of these amulets was a practice common to Egyptians of different faiths, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and perhaps, at the earliest stage, ‘pagans’ who did not belong to any of these religions. ...The Hebrew amulets are from the Cairo Geniza. They date to the twelfth century, but their use of Greek terms (Aphrodite and Epicurus) implies influence from much earlier Greco-Egyptian magical traditions.
The first post in this series is: Animals in Coptic Magic I: The Blood of a White Dove. It deals mostly with a late-antique Coptic Christian amulet. It also links to the (open-access) technical scholarly article by Korshi Dosoo which underlies the posts in the series.
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