The Magical Papyri of the Ramesseum. Research on a Private Library from the Late Middle Kingdom. BiEtud 172.
IFAO| N° d'inventaire | 21695 |
| Format | 20.5 x 28 |
| Détails | 448 p., 2 volumes. |
| Publication | Cairo, 2019 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782724707373 |
Written at the end of the Middle Kingdom and discovered in a wooden box at the bottom of a burial shaft during English excavations carried out in 1895-1896 on the west bank of Thebes, the Ramesseum papyri, half of them – namely a text in cursive hieroglyphs and twelve texts in hieratic – constitute the oldest collection of magical papyri known to date. Often compared to the two other known magical libraries (the Chester-Beatty papyri for the New Kingdom and the Wilbour papyri for the Late Period), the magical papyri of the Ramesseum, now preserved in the British Museum, were published in the form of plates by Sir Alan H. Gardiner in 1955, and are here for the first time the subject of a systematic study. Due to their very fragmentary state, the decipherment of these documents is sometimes a challenge. Although most of the formulas presented here are not known elsewhere, several parallels have been identified in other older or later sources. New hypotheses are also proposed regarding the user of these documents and their geographical origin.
Written at the end of the Middle Kingdom and discovered in a wooden box at the bottom of a burial shaft during English excavations carried out in 1895-1896 on the west bank of Thebes, the Ramesseum papyri, half of them – namely a text in cursive hieroglyphs and twelve texts in hieratic – constitute the oldest collection of magical papyri known to date. Often compared to the two other known magical libraries (the Chester-Beatty papyri for the New Kingdom and the Wilbour papyri for the Late Period), the magical papyri of the Ramesseum, now preserved in the British Museum, were published in the form of plates by Sir Alan H. Gardiner in 1955, and are here for the first time the subject of a systematic study. Due to their very fragmentary state, the decipherment of these documents is sometimes a challenge. Although most of the formulas presented here are not known elsewhere, several parallels have been identified in other older or later sources. New hypotheses are also proposed regarding the user of these documents and their geographical origin.