Fellowship Report

The invitation to come to Würzburg and spend six months as a fellow at the DFG MαgEIA project came at a particularly opportune moment for me. Having worked on late antique Jewish Aramaic magic for quite some years and shifted the majority of my attention to Ethiopian materials in the last decade it was time to take stock and consolidate some of my thoughts and ideas. Being a relative newcomer to Ethiopian Studies, despite a lifelong personal connection with Ethiopia itself, and having managed to publish a few smaller pieces of research in the form of book chapters and journal articles it was time to attempt a small book, an edition of a special text. This fellowship offered not only the time and ideal physical conditions, it also offered the unique chance to join forces with Professor Mersha A. Mengistie to collaborate with on the realisation of this book; to combine my understanding of the history and culture of magic in the Semitic speaking world with Mersha’s unparalleled knowledge and grasp of the history and culture of the Ethiopian Orthodox Twahedo Church (EOTC).

The centre-piece of this book is a text known as the Lefafä ṣǝdq (LS), The Scroll of righteousness, that was first published in 1908 by  B. A. Turayev, and then in 1929 by E. A. W. Budge, and later in 1940 in another version, by S. Euringer. It is probably fair to say that it was Budge’s edition, with his imaginative claims, talent at reaching a wider audience and his wonderful (if not somewhat confusing) title “Bandlet of Righteousness: An Ethiopian Book of the Dead” that made this text so well known. It has, furthermore, come to be known as a  (‘the’ ?) prime example of Ethiopian magical literature. Almost a century later the text Budge thought to be a rare occurrence is now known in many witnesses; I have seen well over thirty and know of more. Our aim is not only to produce a new edition of this text but provide an account of what we can learn about it, and from it about Ethiopian magical literature more generally, and as importantly of those who produced (and still produce) it.

With only a couple of weeks to go I think that we are a hair’s breadth of distance from concluding a first full draft that we will be submitting to Würzburg University Press for publication. That, however, is not the only publication in preparation. There is a long scroll text from the Rylands collection that I transcribed in 2017 which Mersha and I are also editing for publication. The time spent together with Mersha has resulted in many long discussions on a wide variety of texts and aspects of Ethiopian, Jewish and Christian magically related issues. We shared thoughts on philology, theology, folklore, mythology and more. We discussed the nature of the work of scribes who produced magical texts, probing their part in curating such textual objects as they assisted their clients deal with their woes, as they navigate(d) the world they believe(d) is inhabited by supernatural entities that affect(ed) their well-being.

MαgEIA offered so much more than the very personal of requirements (office, computer, help with finding accommodation, etc...), it offered the unique chance to work within a group of like-minded researchers all of whom deal with magical texts and cultures from different periods. Our bi-weekly seminars offered an opportunity to share and learn, as did the many coffees, lunches and chats in the corridor of MαgEIA haus, and the streets and alleys of the charming city of Würzburg.

There was nothing that I wanted or needed that was not provided by the three PIs and MαgEIA’s administrator Anne Noster. Most important was their friendship that came with collegiate exchange, feedback and support that will undoubtedly affect my work and life evermore.

Discovery is always a process, one that requires time to think and the opportunity to share. As my time with MαgEIA rolled on, mine was what I can honestly best refer to as a “magical mystery tour”; one of constant discovery as research and writing should be, and for me inevitably is, a creative process. Ethiopian magical texts and the academic study of magic more generally, have received relatively little attention. There are some fantastic editions of texts but a wider approach such as has been accorded to Jewish, Greek, Assyriological, Ancient Egyptian, or Coptic materials has not been forthcoming. Discoveries regarding the LS that will have implications for the study of other Ethiopian magical texts include things like the identification of some of the materials that scribes have drawn on for the production of their formulae, a nuanced appreciation of the curatorial input of individual scribes into the versions they produced, and the introduction of glosses later on in the life of the text as it was transmitted over a period of at least four hundred years.

Having retired from the university of Southampton some four years ago I have continued to be very research active. Uni Würzburg has provided me with an affiliation that has become a new home to me, a community of colleagues and friends, many of whom I have now developed critical friendships with through which my work is enriched. MαgEIA has also provided me with an affiliate home for another of my projects – check it out here: Ethiopian Painters.

I will be back in MαgEIA Haus in November to give a first account of another project of mine that starts on the first of April which is titled “Incantations and recipes to ward off snakes and protect from snakebites in Ethiopian manuscripts” (https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/emeritus-fellowships/levene).