Magicians' instruments in PMG and the Archaeological Evidence: some examples

The main source on magic in Late Antiquity is offered by the Greek Magical Papyri, a group of texts that that have been considered a kind of handbook for magicians. The "recipes" contained in the papyri require the use of plants, food and beverages for the rituals, but also of particular objects such as rings and gems, lanyards, wax figurines, cups, lamps, and tablets with inscriptions. While obviously no trace remains of the objects made of perishable materials, with very few exceptions, we can recognize the function of some archaeological items that could also have been used for magic purposes, such as bricks, lamps, pottery, figurines and, above all, amulets and curse tablets. Closely linked to the Magical Papyri are in particular the so-called magical gems, semiprecious stones engraved with figures of various deities. If the question of the relations between papyri and gems has been variously discussed by many scholars, the relationship between texts and other classes of archaeological materials is generally less investigated. My aim in this paper is to present some papyri texts with references to objects used by magicians in their rites and some archaeological objects that have been interpreted in relation to the magical texts.