Magical Papyri
Magical papyri may refer to: * Coptic magical papyri * Greek magical papyri *Jewish magical papyri Jewish magical papyri are a subclass of papyri with specific Jewish magical uses, and which shed light on popular belief during the late Second Temple Period and after in Late Antiquity. A related category of contemporary evidence are Jewish magica ...

Coptic Magical Papyri
Coptic magical papyri are magical texts in the Coptic language. There are approximately 600 such texts. The majority date to between the 4th and 12th centuries AD, although there are some Old Coptic texts from the 1st through 4th centuries. There are also bilingual texts in Coptic and Greek or Arabic. Although the texts are collectively known as papyri and the majority are written on papyrus, the corpus as studied and published includes texts on parchment, rag paper, wooden tablets, ostraca and limestone flakes. Generally, older texts are on papyrus and younger ones on paper. Parchment texts are more evenly distributed. The Coptic magical tradition originates from the Greek magical tradition in Egypt. "Virtually all" its texts were produced by Coptic Christians in Egypt. This took place in spite of clerical opposition to magic. Besides texts from a Christian milieu, there are also Manichaean and Gnostic texts. The Coptic magical papyri have been the subject of two research projec ...
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