Choat, M, and Gardiner, I. edd., A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power

This volume publishes a new Coptic handbook of ritual power, comprising a complete 20 page parchment codex from the second half of the first millennium AD. It consists of an invocation including both Christian and Gnostic elements, ritual instructions, and a list of twenty-seven spells to cure demonic possession, various ailments, the effects of magic, or to bring success in love and business. The codex is not only a substantial new addition to the corpus of magical texts from Egypt, but, in its opening invocation, also provides new evidence for Sethian Gnostic thought in Coptic texts.

A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power is the first volume in the series The Macquarie Papyri, which will publish the papyri in the collection of the Museum of Ancient Cultures, Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia).

New series: The Macquarie Papyri (P.Macq.)
The Museum of Ancient Cultures at Macquarie University, Sidney, holds a small, but important collection of some 640 papyri. These are mainly Greek texts. There are also some items written in other languages and scripts, notably Demotic and Coptic (Egyptian). Most are papyri in the strictest sense, but the collection also includes a small number of items written on ostraca, parchment, and wooden tablets. Most of the texts date from the period of the third century BC to the eighth century AD.
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XIV+146 p., 20 colour ill., + CD, 210 x 297 mm, 2013 ISBN: 978-2-503-53170-0 Languages: Coptic, English Paperback The publication is available. Retail price: EUR 65,00 excl. tax Table of Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures and Plates
Introduction

1. The Codex: Codicology – Palaeography, Date, and Provenance – Dialect and Orthography
2. The Contents of the Handbook: The Invocations Text – 
1. The Three Versions of the Invocations Text – 
2. The Invocations Text, Sethianism, and the Practice of Ritual Power – 
3. The List of Prescriptions – 
4. Conspectus of Prescriptions

Text and Translation

1. Coptic Text and Facing Translation
2. Continuous Translation

Commentary
Appendices

1. P. Lond. Copt. I 1008 (BL MS Or. 5987) (L)

2. P. Berl. Inv. 5527 (B)

Bibliography
Indices

1. Words of Egyptian Origin
2. 
Words of Greek Origin
3. Proper Names and Words of Power
4. Symbols and Abbreviations

Plates