Professor H. D. Betz has filled a lacuna in ancient Graeco-Egyptian scholarship for the English speaking world. At last, the formidable erudition of the Papyri Graecae Magicae ["Greek Magical Papyruses"], edited by the German scholar Preisendanz with German translation, is made available to the vulgar human herd.



This unruly herd still will not understand the content and context of the majority of these magical spells, incantations, charms and wish-fulfilments by the ignorant and under-educated people of late antiquity. As the purpose of Egyptian 'magic' [Eg. heku] was to learn the 'law of the god' [Eg. hp n ntr], as one was 'pursuing wisdom' [Eg. mre rhw], so as to (1.) control the world, (2.) learn timeless secrets, and (3.) see the divine; this was the core of Egyptian scribal culture from its beginnings (c. 3000 BCE) to its collapse in the 4th century ACE [After the Common Era].



The vile superstitions of the people of the book, Hebrew, Christian & Islamic, destroyed this magnificent perspective, which when mingled with Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Indian learning, eventually gave us our scientific revolutionary experimental culture.



To understand properly this devolution in cognition and perception, one must go back to the lector priests or 'reading' priests of the ancient Egyptian temples and shrines. These were the elite magicians of ancient Egypt [2700 BCE to c. 600 BCE]. They literally wrote their rites, rituals, and incantation spells on the walls of their great temples, for the Pharoah or Hem-Netjer Tepey [High Priest] to enact or perform. This was the source of these fantastic spells and magical incantations---ten centuries before our present texts were committed to writing. There were, of course, seventeen centuries before these ten centuries, as this magical priestly culture built up from its crude African beginnings.



My suggestion is mastery of competence in Egyptian Hieroglyphics [Classical Egyptian of the Eighteenth Dynasty, New Kingdom, 1567-1320], BCE], as well as Classical Attic Greek before you devour this delicious treatise. You will then have the mental framework to enjoy these tidbits which Professor Betz gives you.



The author of the first review here gave young scholars correct insight as to the strength and weaknesses of this particular edition. We still do not have a competent Egyptologist to review this material to paginate the ancient magical formulae [Eg. hp] that monotonously re-appear over and over in these scattered texts of two centuries (essentially, 4th and 5th centuries ACE). This would require twenty years of concentrated scholarship by a savant; this should not be too demanding of a task in our filthy, ignorant age---what else do savants have to do?



So, beside editorial scholarship (copyists, redactors, etc.), this massive amount of erudite, arcane information requires a brilliant Commentator. The intellectual Research Scientist, Garth Fowden, has begun the task in his charming Princeton University Press "mythos" treatise, "The Egyptian Hermes". Now we need an Isaac Casaubon! [See his 1614 treatise, "De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI. Ad Cardinalis Baronii prolegomena in Annales.] What he did for the Hermetic literature needs to be done for this magical literature.





Respectfully,





John E.D.P. Malin,

Chairman of the Board & Chief Executive Officer

Informatica Corporation

Executive Division

P.O. Drawer 460

Cecilia, Louisiana 70521-0460



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