Esoteric Text

The Greek Magical Papyri

Also Known As Papyri Graecae Magicae

Grimoire Texts

A modern scholarly designation, not an ancient title, for a body of papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt containing spells, hymns, formulas and ritual instructions for compelling gods, spirits and the dead. Its practitioners drew on Greek, Egyptian and Jewish divine names and treated them as interchangeable sources of power, the same working method visible in the individual papyri that survive as named manuscripts, such as The Great Magical Papyrus of Paris (PGM IV) in Preisendanz's standard numbering of the corpus. The material was assembled and edited into its modern form by Karl Preisendanz between 1928 and 1931.

Facts

Scholarship

Critical Edition

Hans Dieter Betz's edited English volume, translating directly from the papyri rather than from Karl Preisendanz's earlier German edition alone, is the standard reference used by current scholarship on Greco-Egyptian magical practice. 1

Transmission

Assembled by modern scholars from papyri recovered mostly from Egyptian rubbish heaps and antiquities markets rather than from any single archive, so the collection is a scholarly compilation of scattered finds rather than a text that circulated as one work in antiquity. 1

Sources

Textual Note

Karl Preisendanz's early twentieth century edition established the numbering system, PGM followed by a papyrus number, still used by scholars citing individual spells within the collection today. 1

Origins

Era of Composition

Roughly the 2nd century BCE to the 5th century CE, Greco-Roman Egypt; most surviving papyri date from the 2nd to 5th centuries CE. 1

Language

Koine Greek 1

Attributed Author / Compiler

No single author; a modern scholarly designation for a body of individual papyri copied and compiled over centuries by different practitioners in Greco-Roman Egypt. 1

Text

Literary Form

Grimoire / manual of magical operations 1

Transmission

Manuscript Tradition

Assembled from papyri excavated across Egypt at different times and now held in several collections, most prominently Paris and Leiden, so the corpus is a modern scholarly compilation of originally unrelated documents rather than a single ancient collection. 1

Structure

A modern compiled corpus of individually numbered papyri (PGM I, PGM IV and so on in Preisendanz's numbering), most written in Koine Greek with passages in Old Coptic and Demotic Egyptian, and with voces magicae, invented or foreign sounding names of power, running through nearly all of them. Not a single composition: each papyrus is its own working handbook of separate procedures. 1

Attributions

Tradition

Greco-Egyptian magic 1

Scholarship and Forensics

Scholarly Note

Recovered from Egyptian rubbish heaps and tombs, the papyri preserve spells, hymns and recipes that mix Egyptian, Greek and Jewish elements, giving scholars a rare direct window onto everyday ritual practice rather than the literary theology of the period. 1

The Greek Magical Papyri

1 entry

Origin Period Start Year

Solitary or Communal

Category of Practice

Who Performs It

Practice Status

Scholarly Standing

The Bornless Ritual

The Greek Magical Papyri

Connections

Associated With

Ceremonial Magick

Spells, hymns, formulas and ritual instructions for compelling gods, spirits and the dead.

Egypt

This source names Egypt directly: "for a body of papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt containing spells, hymns, formulas and ritual instructions for compelling gods, spirits and the dead."