Thoughts on Antiquity

Last year I got the idea to apply Roger S. Bagnall’s onomastic approach in “Religious Conversion and Onomastic Change in Early Byzantine Egypt,” BASP 19 (1982) to Christian magical texts. For those of you not familiar with that paper, Bagnall took the names from village registers and classified them into “Christian”, “pagan” and “not-assigned.” Then, looking at the dates of the registers he constructed an estimate for the rate of Christianization in Egypt. Bagnall used five criteria for identifying a Christian name, as follows: 1) Old and New Testament names; 2) theophoric names based on the Egyptian ntr (Coptic noute), “God,” without a specific god being named; 3) names of Christian emperors following their lifetime; 4) names based on abstract nouns of theological import (e.g. Dora, Eulogios); 5) names of saints and martyrs following their lifetime. He employed three categories for identifying “pagan” names: 1) Egyptian theophoric formations, 2) Greek theophoric formations on Egyptian gods, 3) purely Greek theophoric formations. The basic assumption was that people with “Christian” names are most likely Christians, it being unlikely that pagans would adopt them. On the other hand, it could be possible that many Christians used non-”Christian” names. To correct for this, he used different comparative data to arrive at a factor of about 1.5 by which to multiply the number of “Christian” names to get a more accurate estimate of the total Christian population.

The reason I became curious with this approach was because it might offer some insight into who was using magic in late antiquity (I am using the term “magic” in a straightforward denotative sense, that is, referring to the use of amulets or binding spells, both amatory and non-amatory, and not in some deeper theoretical sense, so as to avoid the entire issue of “what is magic?”). The religious content of magical texts does not reveal much about the user, especially within the syncretistic environment of late antique Egypt. The multifarious divine invocations of the so-called Greek Magical Papyri should make it sufficiently clear that efficacy was drawn from any source that the practitioner deemed as having legitimate power. Below is a brief summary of the data and my musings concerning it.

The core task was to find enough examples of datable applied magic where the name of the user was mentioned and which originated from Egypt. Egyptian provenance is important because following the suppression of the 116-7 CE Jewish revolt, the Jewish population was decimated, making it rather unlikely that someone using a biblical name was Jewish. I found 69 such texts. While this is not a large amount for statistical work, an analysis of it can at least offer some insights for future research directions. I also classified the magical content of the texts into three basic categories: amulets, amatory binding spells and non-amatory binding spells.

After I had classified the names and compared them to the estimated dates of the texts along with the content a few interesting trends became apparent. 21 texts had Christian names, but they did not at all nicely align with the “Christian” magical texts. Up until the fourth-fifth centuries, all eleven Christian names are associated exclusively with non-Christian magic, after which there is a reversal and the remaining ten become associated exclusively with Christian magic. This trend reversal is associated with an upsurge in Christian magic in general, with only two exceptions existing prior to this point. In addition, many non-Christian names begin to be associated with Christian magic as well, although, some (or all?) of these may be Christians. In conjunction with the above trend reversal is an upsurge in the number of amulets. After the period of reversal, 68% are amulets, while before it was only 34%. “Christian” content in magical texts is even more closely linked to amulets (70%). However, when one looks at “Christian” names, they are associated with amulets, amatory binding spells and non-amatory binding spells at about the same rate as pagans. What does this tell us?

On the one hand, Christians have the same basic concerns as pagans, at about the same rates. They need amulets, they want to curse people and make them fall in love as much as non-Christians do. On the other hand, Christian content seems to be deemed to have a different type of efficacy. It seems to be considered mostly appropriate for protecting and healing aims (i.e. amulets). Following the Christianization of Egypt, the Christian priest took over the role as the specialist and supplier of magical tools. This seems to be the most likely explanation for the trend reversal. Priests would be disinclined to invoke other deities whose efficacies may be more appropriate for non-amuletic magic. Therefore, as the main suppliers, they dramatically changed the use of magic. They would provide only “Christian” magic, and that magic would best lend itself to healing and protective aims.