Magical Names: Tracing Religious Changes in Egyptian Magical Texts from Roman and Early Islamic Egypt

International audience Magical texts from Egypt, written in both Greek and Coptic, provide us with a view of religious practices in Egypt quite different from that found either in canonical or documentary texts. This presentation will explore two ways in which the names they contain might help us to map the cultural transformations of the fourth- through eighth centuries. The first is by looking at the names of gods, angels and other superhuman beings, tracking the decline of the ‘pagan’ Graeco-Egyptian deities, and the rise of the Christian pantheon, leaving with a few interesting holdouts. The second is by looking at the names of the individuals mentioned in magical texts – the clients for whom amulets were created, and the victims targeted by love spells and curses. Do the onomastic changes in magical texts follow the general trends of naming practices over this period, or attest to a magical subculture with its own naming habits? And do the religious contents of the magical texts correspond with the implied confessional belongings of the people for whom they were created? Did Christians use Christian magic, or do we find more complex patterns – Christians using ‘pagan’ magic, or Muslims using Christian magic, for example?