Web resources for the study of magic
Web resources for the study of magic
Web resources for magic:
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World
This bibliography contains briefly annotated listings of important scholarship for a wide variety of topics within the study of magic in the ancient Greco-Roman world. It is only accessible through institutional subscription, but can be accessed via Tripod.
The Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database
http://classics.mfab.hu/talismans/visitatori_salutem
Magical gems known today number about 4000 pieces and are preserved in different museums and private collections worldwide, often inaccessible for the public. The groundbreaking, and still fundamental, study on magical gems was published in 1950 by American scholar Campbell Bonner, who then described a tenth of the corpus in his Studies on Magical Amulets. In 2004 Simone Michel listed over 2800 pieces in her monograph Die Magischen Gemmen. Named after Bonner, the primary aim of the Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database (CBd) is to bring the entire corpus of magical gems online in order to make them better accessible for both scholars and the public, and to facilitate their study through the potentials offered by a digital database.
Thesaurus Defixionum
https://www.thedefix.uni-hamburg.de/html/heurist/?db=The_dema&website&id=41774
A database containing the published texts and translations for defixiones from various sources. This resource also provides references to scholarship on individual tablets. This site is adapted from the former resource TheDeMa (Thesaurus Defixionum Magdeburgensis), and it is now somehwat more difficult to navigate, but it still represents the best collection of defixiones in Classical scholarship.
Curse Tablets of Roman Britain
As well as Uley, the website also presents editions of tablets from other temples around the Severn estuary at Lydney, Brean Down and Pagans Hill, Leuntwardine, Chesterton, Marlborough, Wanborough and the Hamble estuary, as well as tablets from southern Britain without a certain provenance. (The site does not include the texts from Bath.)
Searchable Greek Inscriptions from the Packard Humanities Institute
A database with published texts from a wide variety of epigraphical publications, including collections of defixiones.
http://www.trismegistos.org/magic/index.php
TRISMEGISTOS is an interdisciplinary portal of papyrological and epigraphical resources formerly Egypt and the Nile valley (800 BC-AD 800). TM-Magic is the first thematic database hosted by Trismegistos and tries to fill a gap between projects such as the LDAB, HGV and BCD by collecting metadata of somewhat "dubious" nature: all things "religion", "ritual", "magic" and "divination" / "mantike". This site does not include primary texts, but it provides bibliographic information and searchable metadata.
Transmission Of Magical Knowledge In Antiquity: The Papyrus Magical Handbooks In Context
https://voices.uchicago.edu/magicalpapyri/
Most of the resources of this new project are not yet openly available, but some papers and notices are accessible. This project focuses on the materiality of Greek Magical Papyri. The first edition of the papyrus magical handbooks from antiquity, the first two volumes of Papyri Graecae magicae by K. Preisendanz, was finished between the World Wars, in the years 1928-31. PGM has been used ever since as one of the most important sources for the study of Greek magic. This 1928-31 edition was once lightly revised in 1974 by A. Henrichs, and today presents a number of substantial problems that need to be addressed. The edition needs a thorough revision, and the original papyri need to be checked and re-edited. Preisendanz did a very good job for his time, but he did not have access to good images, he followed editing practices which have since been much improved, and he ignored many aspects of the manuscripts, including all non-Greek text, all lectional signs, and all images. Moreover, new fragments have come to light in the last decades, which need to be added to the corpus and which affect the reading of the other texts.
Ancient Magic Academy
https://www.ancientmagic.academy/
This site provides a collection of video lectures by a scholar, Kirsten Dzwiza, who specializes in the material aspects of ancient magic. She used to run a blog site on the charakteres, a very specialized topic, but this new site seems aimed at a much broader audience.
The Homeromanteion
http://www.homeromanteion.com/about/
The Homeromanteion, or Scimitar, was a text used between the 2nd and 4th centuries to provide automatic oracular answers to questions. Three dice are cast to generate one of 216 possible numbers, each referring to a line selected from Homer's Odyssey or Iliad. This line can be interpreted to give an answer to the question posed. This site provides a random generator to simulate the consultation of the Homeromanteion found in PGM VII and in other sources.