Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity by Shaul ShakedReview by: Daniel R. MillerJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 127, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 2007), pp. 109-110Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20297237 .

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Brief Reviews 109

bibliography lacks many important reference works in

both biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies. Note the

absence of numerous works by scholars such as L. C.

Allen, A. A. Anderson, Y. Avishur, A. Berlin, J. Braun, W. Brueggemann, P. Craigie, M. J. Dahood, J. L. Foster, D. N. Freedman, D. M. Howard, O. Keel, H.-J. Kraus, T. Longman, P. D. Miller, S. Mowinckel, M. O'Connor, H. Ringgren, I. Singer, M. S. Smith, M. E. T?te, W. A.

VanGemeren, W. G. E. Watson, C. Westermann, etc.

Psalms in Community is to be praised for bringing

together a disparate group of scholars and offering an

eclectic overview of the Psalms in the Jewish and

Christian traditions, but it may fall short in matters of

scholarly/classroom utility, and it contributes almost

nothing to the study of Psalms in the liturgical contexts

of the ancient Near East.

Kenneth C. Way

Cincinnati, Ohio

the two corpora, asserting that the bowls preserved only "a scant few of the ancient magical traditions of Sumer

and Akkad" (p. 70). Antonio Panaino deals with the Iranian sphere, spe

cifically Zoroastrian culture. His piece is devoted pri

marily to terrestrial and astral omina, respectively the

sighting of snakes and the appearance of the moon.

(Divination is obviously considered a form of "magic"

by the author, although the mantic arts are not classi

fied as such by all scholars.) Hagit Amirav deals with a

"coercive" (pp. 128,137) incantation intended to facili

tate a male client's securing of a woman's affections.

The spell is written on a papyrus from the celebrated

archeological site Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. (Strangely, the

papyrus date is variously given as "fourth-century"

[p. 125], "between the late third century and mid-fourth

century AD" [p. 130], and "late fourth/early fifth cen

tury" [p. 138].) Simone Michel contributes an expository article on ancient and modern magic gems, of which she

has examined nearly three thousand (p. 141). Designs and inscriptions on these objects are not reversed, a clear

indication that they were employed as talismans and

amulets (pp. 141-42). She argues, contrary to the asser

tions of some other scholars, that no magical gem has

ever been used for malignant purposes (p. 148).

Giuseppe Veltri focuses on magical recipes copied after Masekhet Berakhot in the Manuscript Munich

Hebr. 95 (Paris, 1342), probably from an earlier hand

book (p. 257). A number of these recipes are concerned

with the manipulation of water, and Veltri surmises that

the writer of the Babylonian Gemara, Shlomo ben Shim

shon, has sought to protect this Bavli manuscript magi

cally from the flooding besetting Northern Europe at that

time (p. 267)! In a very dense essay, Klaus Hermann

analyzes the prayer for "attaining a better understanding of the Torah with the aid of magic-practices" (p. 175) attributed to the Geonic-period mystic Rav Hamnuna the

Elder (third/fourth century c.e.), in Tefillat Hamnuna

Sava. He asserts that this text was intended mainly "to

create a synthesis between Hekhalot, magic, liturgy and . . . Haggada" (p. 207).

Three contributors deal to varying degrees with texts

from the Cairo Geniza. Reimund Leicht's paper is dia

chronic in nature, as he considers what Geniza and Ash

kenazi manuscripts can tell scholars about the historical

development of Jewish magical literature (p. 215). Steven Wasserstrom's objective is also historical: In

an open-ended piece, he probes issues to consider for

constructing "a cultural and religious history of Geniza

magic" (p. 269). Michael Swartz focuses on the ques tion of how magical rituals encode signification (in the semiotic sense) through their "letters, words, and

images, and how they anticipate a response in kind on

the part of the angels, demons, and deity" (p. 235). Spe

cifically, he considers messages conveyed via blood, the wearing of a supernatural name, and adjuration (all human communication with supernatural entities), and

divination procedures (deity to human).

Officina M?gica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in

Antiquity. Edited by Shaul Shared. Institute of

Jewish Studies Studies in Judaica, vol. 4. Leiden:

Brill, 2005. Pp. x + 320, illus. 149.

The majority of the essays in this volume originated in an international symposium organized in 1999 by the Institute of Jewish Studies of University College

London, described by one participant as "concerned with

the question of how magical texts, procedures, uses,

amulets, etc. work" (p. 255 n. 1). Two of the thirteen

pieces have in fact already been published in a 2003

volume (p. x), while another is a translation of an essay

previously published in a Hebrew-language journal

(p. 269). Eleven contributions deal with magical texts and/or

materia m?gica. In the opening essay, editor Shaul

Shaked discusses nine Jewish Aramaic magical bowls

of Babylonian provenience dating to the end of the

Sasanian/late Talmudic period now in the Sch0yen Col

lection in Oslo and London. He remarks, inter alia, on

the presence thereon of some prayer formulae, of several

texts belonging to the genre of the Jewish mystical Hekhalot literature, and of two Mishnaic texts (p. 3).

Joachim Oelsner discusses not only magical bowls

and clay tablets of southern Mesopotamian provenience but also many other (non-magical) texts relating to

the Babylonian cult. He concludes that "well into the

Parthian period Babylonian cults and culture were still

alive" (p. 44) but had almost entirely died out by the

Sasanian period (p. 45). Markham Geller investigates

possible influences from Sumerian-Akkadian magical texts in the later Jewish Aramaic magical bowls of

similarly Mesopotamian (Babylonian) provenience. He

finds many more differences than similarities between

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110 Journal of the American Oriental Society 121.1 (2007)

Two essays in the volume deal chiefly or entirely with theoretical issues concerning the phenomenological

category of "magic." Rejecting assertions that this term

should be abandoned in favor of other terminology, such as "ritual power," Yuval Harari proposes "a new,

quasi-ostensive definition" (p. 107) of magic. His pro

posal of "an ongoing learning and refining process . . .

constituted upon as wide a description as possible of the

phenomena we wish to denote by that term" (p. 114) is

a promising approach. Nevertheless, he espouses the

unwarranted position that one must distinguish between

"religion" and "magic" as though they were two discrete

phenomena. Rather, magic should be considered one

component within religion, a species of the genus. Harari's ultimate concern is "the magic of the Jews of

Palestine and its environs in antiquity and the early Middle Ages" (p. 117), and he argues persuasively that

for this group and this period "a Jewish magic text in its

clearest and most reduced sense is an adjuration text"

(p. 119). Finally, Marcel Sigrist presents an argument for

seeing magic as "an integral part of human rationality"

(p. 296), certainly a legitimate view. Like Harari, how

ever, Sigrist sees a need to demarcate "religion" from

"magic" (see, e.g., p. 305). There are a few spelling errors/typos (e.g., pp. 44,

62, 104, 111 n. 69, 194 n. 82, 207, 209, 257, 267) and

other mistakes in the prose (pp. 205, 295) that mildly

impede the reader's progress through the volume. This

does not, however, detract appreciably from the rich

sampling of scholarship within Officina M?gica, across

several different domains, on a textual genre and an

aspect of human behavior that resist easy interpretation.

Daniel R. Miller

Bishop's University

cial areas such as the Baharia oasis, Hierakonpolis, el

Kab, Aswan, and Aniba in Nubia. Also not apparent from the title is that the text addresses decorated tombs

of the post-Amarna Dynasty 18 (just prior to the Rames

side age) when there was considerable innovation and

testing of new styles and themes.

The text is divided into two sections: a survey of the

development of artistic style(s), and an analysis of these

artistic styles. It begins with a detailed stylistic survey of Theban tombs divided into those that span the end of

the Amarna period to the end of Dynasty 18 and Dy

nasty 19 and tombs of Dynasty 20. Tombs are assigned dates according to what is known about the tomb

owner's career (and often much is known), by a repre sentation of a king or a reference to his name, and in

many cases, on much more subjective stylistic features.

Of the thirty-four Dynasty 19 tombs studied, fourteen

are assigned to that time period according to their style. And of the twenty-two from the following dynasty,

nearly half (twelve) are dated stylistically. Hofmann

clearly states what aspects of the paintings suggest a

particular date. For example, in tombs of Dynasty 19, men's skin tends to be red-brown, while in the following

dynasty, it is lighter, almost beige. Although some gen eral trends can be discerned, doing a diachronic study of tombs employing samples that are not firmly dated

creates some methodological difficulties.

The text is followed by two appendixes. The first is

devoted to work methods. This section of the book has

the most easily accessible general information about the

tombs, with a valuable discussion of the preparation of

walls, the variety of types of relief, guidelines and grids,

pigments, and pigment change over time. The second

appendix consists of an extensive set of tables (nearly a

quarter of the entire book) that sort tombs by criteria

such as technique (raised relief only, combination of

raised and sunk relief, paint only, etc.), colors employed for various aspects of the paintings, clothing, wigs, presence or absence of perfume cones and their shape, hair ornaments, and body type. These are helpful for

dating other types of materials, such as Ramesside

stelae. These appendixes are followed by indexes of

personal names, tomb numbers, and general terms that

enable the reader to dip into the book for specific monuments.

I occasionally felt overwhelmed by this volume

because it tries to cover so much ground. The author

deals with painted as well as relief decoration, and she

compares private tombs to other private tombs and to

stelae, as well as to contemporary royal tombs and

monuments. Other sections deal with architecture, styles of relief, and how the work was done. It would have

been very helpful to include summaries of the sections, for much of the text consists of a detailed description of a specific tomb with remarks about its stylistic and

thematic relationship to others, but there are no overall

statements about how the tomb reflects development. The author herself recognizes this, commenting that

Bilder im Wandel: Die Kunst der Ramessidisehen

Privatgr?ber. By Eva Hofmann. Theben, vol. 17.

Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2004. Pp. ix

+ 217, illus. 86.

One of the glories of ancient Egyptian civilization is

the incredible ability of its artists. One can only marvel

at their output and at their technique. A large number of

finely decorated tombs were produced in the Ramesside

Period (Dynasties 19-20, ca. 1293-1070 B.c.), with the

greatest concentration in western Thebes. This city was

the theocratic and cultural center of the country for more

than five hundred years, and as a result, the tombs there

were decorated by the most accomplished artists. Appro

priately, since this volume is in the series "Theben," the

majority of the tombs under discussion are located in

that region. What is not apparent from the title, and a

valuable feature of the work, is the discussion of con

temporary tombs at Saqqara in the north and in pro vin

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