Egyptian curse figure (1991-1802 BCE) 12th Dynasty, clay with red pigment, (on loan from musees royaux d’art et d’histoire/Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Gescheidenis, Brussels), image courtesy of Toledo Museum of Art
A small, black-box of a gallery, now located inside the elegant, light-filled Glass Pavilion of Toledo Museum of Art, projects an air of mystery and excites wary interest. Inside, museum visitors will find four dark chambers filled with effigies, amulets and magical texts narrating the story of humanity’s fascination with the unseen. “Cursed!” takes visitors through fifteen centuries of magical practice from ancient Egypt to the height of the Roman empire.
The entrance gallery is devoted to magical practices in ancient Egypt, which were more or less indistinguishable from the Egyptians’ official practice of religion. Magic, or heka, as it was called, was state-sanctioned and tied closely to the priestly class. Widely held occult beliefs were embedded in an established theological system that encompassed divinities, personifications of natural forces and the departed.
Priests were in charge of the official religion that supported the state and were responsible for marshaling the forces of the cosmos to benefit the country’s rulers. At the behest of the pharaoh, they fashioned effigies upon which were written curses against rival nations. Elaborate wall reliefs showing the pharaoh’s desired triumph over foreign enemies apparently served a similar purpose. The clay figurine (1991-1802 BCE) on display behind a freestanding wall in the entrance gallery, was wielded as a kind of all-purpose magical weapon, comprehensively cursing the nations of Nubia, Syria, Libya and Palestine.
A long, narrow strip of papyrus nearby demonstrates the importance of text in the era’s magical ontology. It also illustrates how a parallel practice of personal magic co-existed alongside official religious practices. The central poly-chromed figure is the deity Seven-headed Bes, whose image shows him with a falcon’s back, a crocodile’s tail, and six smaller heads surrounding his own.
Neo-Assyrian cuneiform tablet with ritual to counteract witchcraft, Maqlû (669-631 BCE), incised clay, (on loan from the British Museum)/Photo: K.A. Letts
The exhibit displays many smaller amulets of thin gold sheets or faience meant to be worn or carried as personal talismans or applied as grave goods to the deceased. Egyptians’ well-known preoccupation with the afterlife extended to their belief that after death, ancestors could become akhu, powerful spirits who were believed capable of affecting the world of the living.
In the gallery adjoining the entrance, artifacts relating to the magical practices of Mesopotamia provide an intriguing opportunity to compare and contrast the attitudes of the two civilizations to the supernatural. Like the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians incorporated magic into their state-sanctioned religious practice. A well-preserved neo-Assyrian cuneiform tablet (669-631 BCE), on display from the British Museum, provides a window onto the religious/magical practices of the Mesopotamian priesthood. In it, the annual ritual, called the Maqlû or “burning,” details the exorcism by priests of harmful magic practiced by “witches” against the established rulers. The state-approved priesthood was male, and the feared evil witches were referred to in texts as female, suggesting a hint of misogyny embedded in Mesopotamia’s patriarchal society.
Amulet with the demon Pazuzu (681-627 BCE), carved chalcedony, (on loan from the Wyvern Collection), image courtesy of Toledo Museum of Art
A pantheon of demonic beings figured prominently in the magical practices of Mesopotamians, ranging from benign to malignant. Magic could be employed along a spectrum, from protective charms at one end, to more neutral purposes such as love potions or spells to influence legal disputes, to actively harmful witchcraft. A small amulet, probably worn against the evil intent of Lamashtu (a sort of anti-fertility figure) is on display. Like many of the artifacts in the exhibition, this token is quite small. Visitors will either need sharp eyes or perhaps a magnifying glass to make out details. A handsome, leonine head of Lamashtu’s nemesis, Pazuzu, carved from chalcedony, represents him in his role as protector.
In stark contrast to the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, the attitude of the Greeks toward magic was guarded, to say the least. Ever the rationalists, they generally viewed magic as either a bogus practice or an evil one. The sole exceptions were diviners and oracles who operated within the acceptable bounds of civic religion. Shunned by the mainstream, magic still found applications in Greek medicine and practices involving the dead.
Magic remained an irresistible plot device in Greek myths and tales, though. The powerful sorceresses Circe and Medea are represented in the exhibition by two spectacular vessels illustrating their infamous misdeeds. The red-figure calyx krater (440 BCE) shows Odysseus pursuing Circe to compel her restoration of his men to their natural forms. The rather gruesome story of Medea’s (successful) scheme to deliver the throne of Pelias to Jason is the subject of the images on the nearby hydria or water jug (510-500 BCE) that ushers us out the door of Greece’s skepticism and into the burgeoning variety of magical practices that developed in the Roman empire.
Papyrus Amulet against Fever, Egyptian, 3rd century CE, papyrus and ink, (on loan from University of Michigan Library). Spell composed for a woman named Helena/Photo: K.A. Letts
In Imperial Rome, the complexities of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Greek magical entities and practices were joined by an ever-larger variety of occult beliefs imported from cultures touched by the conquests of Alexander the Great. The center of this proliferation was Alexandria, where the many mystical traditions of the multi-ethnic population sparked an explosion of novel magical practices, objects and texts. The exhibition features numerous inscribed amulets carved from semi-precious stones and elaborate spells on papyrus. Written spell books with complex instructions for the use of supernatural powers abounded. Even Jewish beliefs began to be included in magical practices; they were responsible for the inclusion of divine names and the naming of angels in spells, and for the novel concept of demon possession.
The fascination of humans with magic didn’t end with the Roman empire, of course. The exhibition’s curator Jeffrey Spier (assisted by Gina Konstantopoulos and Foy Scalf, and with an excellent exhibition design by Jessi Mueller), has provided us with a fascinating introduction to a subject that still holds considerable interest if we are to judge by the continued popularity of the Harry Potter books and the “Twilight” movie franchise. Modern audiences will appreciate “Cursed!” not only for what it tells us about the beliefs of ancient cultures, but what we suspect even now about the mysteries of the universe.
“Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World” at Toledo Art Museum, 2445 Monroe, Toledo, Ohio, through July 5.
