Graeco-Aegyptiaca Online Lecture

Dr. Korshi Dosoo will deliver an online lecture via Zoom as part of the Graeco-Aegyptiaca lecture series. To attend, please register here.

The Egyptian Language in the Greek Magical Papyri: Loan-words, phrases, and Old Coptic passages

Since the work of Hans Dieter Betz and his collaborators, scholars have been acutely aware that the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri represent a multilingual corpus, in which the Egyptian and Greek languages (as well as, to a lesser extent, other languages such as Aramaic and Hebrew) interact closely with one another. In this paper I will discuss some of the ways this interaction may be seen in predominantly Greek-language manuscripts, from the presence of Egyptian-origin voces magicae and loanwords to entire passages and texts written in either Graeco-Egyptian (Egyptian in Greek script) or Old Coptic (in Greek script with the addition of demotic signs). I will discuss the diversity of these texts, which demonstrate diverse geographical origins, and which both preserve older Pharaonic religious traditions, and point towards otherwise lost traditions of Egyptian Christianity.

The Graeco-Aegyptiaca lectures are organized by the UCL Department of Greek and Latin, London and the Palladion, Budapest. The series started in January 2022 with papers given monthly by established scholars in the field of ancient Egyptian and Greek cultural relations.