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The original version of this work, which is the one that should be cited, can be found via
<http://isaw.nyu.edu/publications/isaw-papers>.

ISAW Papers 18.3 (2020)

The Magician as a Literary Figure in Ancient Egyptian Texts

Rita Lucarelli, University of California, Berkeley

In Franziska Naether, ed. 2020. Cult Practices in Ancient Literatures: Egyptian, Near Eastern
and Graeco-Roman Narratives in a Cross-Cultural Perspective. Proceedings of a Workshop at
the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York, May 16-17, 2016. ISAW Papers 18.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2333.1/s4mw6x82

Abstract: Magicians are powerful figures in ancient literatures. Although they are generally
described as human, they can reach and share supernatural powers thanks to their secret,
restricted knowledge of the written spells and for their skills in performing rituals.
Magicians can be priests, wise men, local ritual experts, tricksters, outsiders or shamanic
personalities, depending from the audience they address and their cultural and religious
context. This paper will discuss the multifaceted role of magician in the ancient Egyptian
society through the evidence given mainly by literary sources as well as by a number of
non-literary spells and materia magica. Questions of definition and terminology employed
in the sources to describe a magician will be taken into consideration, as well as the issue of
gender and of the almost total lack of evidence for “witches” as a complementary literary
figure in ancient Egypt.

Library of Congress Subjects: Magicians--Egypt--History--To 640 A.D; Magicians in

literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The role of the magician in ancient Egypt
Did “witches” exist in ancient Egypt?
Herdsmen as magicians
Magical vs literary texts on the role of the magician in ancient Egypt
The learned magician
Conclusion
Bibliography
Notes

Introduction
Magicians are powerful figures in ancient literatures all over the world, although defining what kind of
ritual specialists can be called mágos,1 sorcerer, wizard or more generally “magician” (and their female
counterparts) in a given historical context is not a simple issue. It implies a thorough understanding of a
religious and social phenomenon, i.e., “magic,” a concept whose boundaries and usefulness is still debated
among scholars, who continue to struggle to define its functions in the sphere of religious and ritual

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practices in different cultures, both ancient and modern.2 The common folkloristic stereotype of a
magician as an individual who can manipulate evil and supernatural forces is not reflected in the historical
records and the variety of figures who performed “magic.” Instead, we should consider such figures as
“ritual specialists,” skilled in techniques of healing, protecting or binding, and harming through the use of
rituals and spells.3
In Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman Egypt, such ritual specialists could operate in different contexts, from
temples (as priests) to the towns and villages (as doctors, healers and the ancient equivalent of modern
sorcerers).4 We have a substantial amount of evidence, material and textual, dating from the early
Pharaonic to the Graeco-Roman period, that helps us to understand how magicians operated in ancient
Egypt, in accordance to the primordial force and the god Heka, which is commonly translated as “magic.”5
It is interesting, though, that the ancient Egyptian magical texts do not explicitly reveal much about the
magician as an individual and a performer – either about his specific social identity or the way he was
perceived by the beneficiaries or victims of the magic he was performing.6 However, the study of magical
texts – both funerary and those intended for daily uses – is helpful for catching a glimpse of the socio-
cultural context of magic. From them we can learn about the ritual tools used by the magician. Therefore,
they provide precious information on the materiality of magic.7 Moreover, they often contain the ritual
instructions for the magician to follow, shedding light on the magical and religious beliefs underpinning
the magician’s performance.8
In this contribution, I will attempt to define the role of magicians in Egypt by integrating the
information that we gain from literary texts with the descriptions of magicians’ activities coming from
other non-literary, magical or ritual sources. The dominance and popularity of the genre of stories
recounting the exploits of magicians is well known and particularly well studied in Demotic literature,
with the narratives of Setne I and Setne II being the most famous examples (see also the contribution of E.
Love). However, earlier texts provide very interesting evidence as well, and what follows is meant as an
overview of the most representative of these texts.

The role of the magician in ancient Egypt

Who could actually be considered a “magician” in ancient Egypt? In English, the term “magician,” similar
to its root “magic,” is rather ambiguous and elusive, since who is a magician, as well as what counts as
magic, are in the eye of the beholder and depends on social recognition. The French sociologist Marcel
Mauss offered the following description: “It is public opinion which makes the magician and creates the
power he wields. Thanks to public opinion he knows everything and can do anything. If nature holds no
secrets from him, if he draws his powers from the primary sources of light, from the sun, the planets, the
rainbow or the depths of all water, it is public opinion which desires that he should.”9 This statement
certainly applies to the ancient Egyptian cultural context of Heka and to the role that literature held as
expression of a “public opinion” (though only on the learned, élite level).10
The most commonly encountered type of a magician in literary sources is the priest in the temple. As is
clear from the most common priestly titles, these temple magicians could also act as compilers and
performers of magical spells and rites. The ḫry-ḥb, literally the “carriers of the scroll,” were the “lector-
priests” reciting incantations and hymns during temple rituals and within private contexts (e.g., funerary,
apotropaic, daily magic, etc.). They played an important role and were very popular during the entire
Pharaonic period and even mentioned in the Bible as example of ancient Egyptian magicians. In particular,
the “Chief Lector Priest” (ḫry-ḥb ẖry-tp or in its abbreviated form ḫry-tp; Khery-heb-Hery-tep/Hery tep)
indicated a ritual expert in magical practices,11 and is a title attested from as early as the Old Kingdom to
until Late Antiquity (roughly 2,700 BCE – 500 CE). The same title is transcribed as hartibi in a neo-Assyrian
document listing the court personnel, probably under Esarhaddon (661–669 BCE), where it was used to
describe foreign Egyptian diviners, particularly “dream interpreters,” together with other kind of conjurers
(asipu), as well as doctors and scribal specialists.12 In Hebrew, a very similar word to hartibi is used to

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designate the magicians of the pharaoh.13 In the diplomatic correspondence between Ramesses II and the
Hittite court, a magician appears also in the role of an emissary to foreign lands.14 Both in Egypt as well
as in Mesopotamia, lector-priests of the Hery-tep-type played a very important political role, since they
were well educated and probably trained in the scribal school of the temple – the so-called “House of
Life.” They were involved in royal expeditions as well.
Literacy was important for a magician, if he was to be involved in political missions and travel outside
Egypt. In Late Antiquity, for instance, we have reports of wise men performing miracles (i.e., possessing
what we could call “magical skills” in a different historical context) such as John the Grammarian15 or
Constantine/Cyril, travelling on foreign embassies, for example, to the Arabic caliphates and performing
“miracles” there.16 With this type of the learned magician, religious authority and magic skills were
complemented by the ability to participate in and sustain diplomatic discussions, displaying a deep
philosophical and theological body of knowledge. The figure of the eloquent magician also occurs in
literary tales of Pharaonic Egypt, in which the magician speaks in front of the king or happens himself to
be the king’s son. In particular in certain tales, next to professional priests the king or the son of the king is
a learned magician with a priestly title, therefore playing the same role of the literate priest (see below.)
Similarly, in scenes of temple reliefs, kings are the are main actors together with deities, performing cult
practices. Magicians as “good scribes” and “wise men” occur especially in the narratives of Setne I and II
and in other texts of the Graeco-Roman period (332 BCE – 500 CE). These show that from the Hellenistic
period onwards, literate ritual experts continued to play important roles in the temple, as well as in private
daily contexts.
A second popular figure of magician was that of the swnw (sunu), namely a doctor or physician, who in
many occurrences also bears priestly titles associated with magic. Moreover, a magician with medical
skills could be simply called sȝw (sa.w), “protector,” mostly indicating a local healer or medicine man
practicing at the village level, whereas the sunu practiced in a temple or royal context. The close and
important connection between magic and medicine in ancient Egypt is evident from the numerous medical
prescriptions mixed with incantations, as well as by the personification of illnesses as demons, which is
common in ancient Near Eastern societies.17 Finally, we should also consider the existence of Heka as a
force that could be manipulated by Heka-workers who could cast spells to harm someone for the benefit of
their clients.18 Both magical and literary texts depict these hostile ritualists as foreigners, mostly coming
from Nubia but also from Libya and Syria. However, it is difficult to assess if these figures of foreign ritual
specialists were actually part of the ancient Egyptian society already in the early Pharaonic period or if the
conception of an evil foreign magician, whose most popular example is probably the Nubian sorcerer in
the Demotic story of Setne II, was merely a literary stereotype of a convenient bogeyman in entertaining
stories.19

Did “witches” exist in ancient Egypt?

We do not find mentions of the female ritual specialists who, in the Western world, would be thought of as
“witches,” in either the ancient Egyptian literary or magical texts.20 However, foreign evil women,
especially Nubian ones, do occur in the sources, typically opposed to the “good” Egyptian
priest/magicians.21 In a few magical texts we find the mention of a rḫ.t, (Rekhet), literally “the one
(female) who knows,” the verbal root rḫ (rekh) being widely employed in funerary and ritual texts to
indicate secret, magical knowledge.22 From the sources, it seems that Rekhet-females can act both
benevolently or malevolently in society. In Ramesside Deir el-Medina (about 1262–1069 BCE), they may
also act as midwives, seers or prophets.23 It would be tempting to compare the figure of a Rekhet-woman
to that of the witch in Western folklore, but the evidence in ancient Egyptian sources is too scarce for such
an assessment. However, we could supply examples from Near Eastern texts on female sorcerers. In a text
dealing with a so-called Maqlu apotropaic ritual, a female magician (Kassaptum) seems to bewitch a
victim.24 A number of Jewish texts also mention women accused of witchcraft. Although from the

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surviving ancient Egyptian sources we do not get any hint of an official prohibition on women doing
magic. At least, we could assume that female figures similar to those depicted in Mesopotamia and in
Jewish contexts probably operated in Egypt, too.25 It is also interesting to note that the masculine
counterpart to Rekhet, which is rḫ.y, may be used for magicians in literary texts such as Setne I (for the
magician Naneferkaptah). However, the title does not necessarily indicate a competence in magic.
The term Rekhet can also be an epithet for goddesses such as Isis and Hathor.26 Deities in general,
especially goddesses, play an active role in magical performances. In ritual scenes decorating temple
walls, gods are depicted assisting the king, who could be considered in his active role of performer as the
human ritual expert – the ultimate human magician.27 In some magical incantations, the gods are
summoned up in order to assist and empower the human magician. Divine epithets can refer to their role in
magic as well, the most popular one being Isis’s epithet wr.t-ḥqȝ.w, (Weret Heka.u) “great of magic,”
which can also refer to a series of cobra goddesses.28 Deities and supernatural beings performing wonders
may appear as visions to the protagonists of many tales in Egyptian literature as well, especially in tales of
journeys such as The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor or The Story of Sinuhe.29

Herdsmen as magicians
Finally, it is interesting how even herdsmen could act as magicians, as shown in scenes carved on mastaba
walls during the Old Kingdom (2700–2200 BCE), such as those in the tombs of Ti and Mereruka. In these
scenes, the men are depicted while protecting their herds from crocodiles emerging from the water.
Besides explicit apotropaic gestures such as pointing the finger at the dangerous reptiles, they recite what
are called “water spells” (ḥs.w-mw)30 to make the crocodiles blind and consequently not harmful:
Crossing the canal by the cattle. Warding off death. Warding off the crocodile by the herdsman … May he
come as a sightless one!”31
Herdsmen differ from the learned magicians (doctors and priests) since they possess a local, specific
knowledge of only certain apotropaic spells against crocodiles. However, it has been noted by Robert
Ritner how in most of these mastaba scenes depicting herdsmen physically performing magic through the
apotropaic gesture of pointing out the finger, a standing or sitting figure with a priestly attitude is the one
reciting the spell. This suggests that the written knowledge and the recitation of the spell belonged to a
priestly specialist, while the herdsman only possessed the practical and performative skills for doing
magic.32 In the literary tale of the Middle Kingdom (2055–1650 BCE) known as The Story of the
Herdsman, attested chiefly in a papyrus kept in Berlin (P. Berlin P. 3024), the reciters of the water spells
are called “the knowledgeable ones among the herdsmen” (rḫ.w jḫ.t, literally “the ones who know
things”), with a clear reference to priestly knowledge. The story also features a mysterious goddess who
presents a danger to the herds.

Magical vs literary texts on the role of the magician in ancient Egypt

The Story of the Herdsman also includes a water spell on the model of those from the tomb inscriptions
and depictions mentioned above, showing clearly how literary and magical texts can be interconnected.
This water spell is especially interesting because it has a parallel in spell 836 of the Coffin Texts, which
mentions the water spells as well as a “mistress of the land.” The latter recalls the mysterious apparition of
the naked goddess in the marshes in the Berlin papyrus, probably in an allusion to rituals for appeasing the
“distant goddess” (Mut, Tefnut, Sekhmet or Hathor), known from a few ritual papyri.33
In the literature of the Graeco-Roman period (332 BCE–500 CE), especially in Demotic, it is a recognized
fact that the scribes re-edited magical and religious texts. One of the most significant examples is the
famous reference in Setne I to the amuletic spell of Pyramid Texts 254. However, there are also earlier
literary tales which provide us with vivid descriptions of magicians whose speech and performance acts
reflect a deep magical knowledge on the part of the authors.

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Papyrus Westcar, which is a masterpiece of Middle Kingdom literature, is another outstanding example
of how closely magical literature was linked to fiction and secular texts. It contains a cycle of stories told
by pharaoh Khufu’s sons on the marvels performed by the magicians of their times.34 Although this
papyrus is dated to the Hyksos period around 1600 BCE (right before the 18th Egyptian Dynasty, marking
the start of the New Kingdom), it seems that the text has been composed in the 12th Dynasty (Middle
Kingdom), while the story takes place much earlier in the 4th dynasty (Old Kingdom). Within the narrative
of Papyrus Westcar, the apparent aim of the tales is the entertainment of the king; but they also function as
a crescendo-motive to the main topic of the plot, which is conceived as a prophetic text for the birth of the
three kings who founded the 5th Dynasty. The third story of this papyrus, in which the the king’s son
Hordjedef plays the main role, is especially intriguing. The same Hordjedef is also known as a sage from
the so-called Teachings of Hordjedef, a wisdom text whose fragments are preserved on several ostraca.35
Moreover, he is also mentioned in the colophon of a few spells of the Book of the Dead, where it is said
that they are “found by Hordjedef, the great sage.”36 Hordjedef’s status as a sage may also refer to his
magical knowledge. Thus, he is not only a literary and historical figure – his tomb is preserved at Giza –
but a magician himself.

The learned magician

In contrast to the other royal sons in the stories of Papyrus Westcar, who only narrate the marvels of the
past, Hordjedef brings an actual magician to court. This is Djedi – one hundred and ten years old – who
performs wonders, predicts the future, knows the location of secret shrines of the god Thoth, and can even
“reattach a head which has been cut off.”37 In the description of Djedi’s performance, great emphasis is
put on the fact that Djedi’s magic is “written” and in order to be effective it has to be recited. Already
when the magician is summoned by Hordjedef from the South, before leaving he says: “Let me have a
boat, that it may bring my students and my writings.” The magician is therefore represented as a learned
scholar caring about his disciples and texts.
At a certain point of the story, Khufu asks Djedi about the jp.wt n.t wn.t n.t Ḏḥw.ty, a mysterious
expression which has been dubiously translated as “the chambers of the sanctuary of Thot.”38 It is through
a parallel in the Coffin Texts, particularly that copied from a coffin from Gebelein kept in the Museo Egizio
in Turin, that we understand how this part of the tale is a piece of contemporary funerary religion
transported into the literature of the time. While Thoth played a prominent role in the eschatological
beliefs of the Middle Kingdom, he was not significant in this specific area of the Old Kingdom at the time
of Khufu. The author of Papyrus Westcar was probably aware of the descriptions of the netherworld found
in the Book of the Two Ways, which is part of the Coffin Texts, and mentions the jp.wt as a sort of area
where shrines of divine images where placed. In an illuminating article of 1973, Erik Hornung has
revealed several lexical similarities between this section of the Coffin Texts and the speech of Djedi on the
jp.wt of Thoth in Papyrus Westcar, leaving no doubt that its author was well informed about the funerary
and magical literature of his time.39
The protagonist Hordjedef is not the only figure of a great magician occurring in literary texts whose
expertise is characterized by writing. Imhotep, another famous ancient Egyptian magician, architect and
sage who was divinized, appears as priest-magician in the text on the so-called Famine or Dream Stela of
the Ptolemaic period (probably during the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, about 210–181 BCE) in Aswan.40
This extensive document inscribed on stone describes a dream of Imhotep had in a seven-year period of
drought and famine during Djoser’s reign in the Old Kingdom. Similar to Papyrus Westcar, the action is
set in a glorious past, which happens frequently in Greek and Demotic Graeco-Roman literary texts. In the
story recorded on the stela, Djoser asks Imhotep to find out where the Nile god Hapy lives and which other
gods are found in the same area, so that he can appease them by bringing offerings and put an end to the
drought that was afflicting the country. Imhotep therefore travels first to the temple of ḥw.t-Ib.ty (“the
house of the nets”) to look in the archives. He learns that the Nile is controlled by Khnum in Elephantine.

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Consequently, he travels there, finds the temple of Khnum, provides offerings to the gods, falls asleep and
has a dream in which Khnum promises to let the Nile rise again. The first thing Imhotep does after waking
is to write down the dream itself.
Being able to write and transmit sacred and magical knowledge through writings is presented as a need
for the magician and, as a matter of fact, it is central in almost all the literary texts featuring magicians,
who are always depicted as professional scribes. Magical handbooks used in Egypt at least since the
Middle Kingdom played a main role as reference books for the ancient Egyptian learned magician. Even
Setne Khaemwaset, son of Ramesses II (1290–1224 BCE), who inspired the Demotic stories of Setne I and
II, was famous for his interest in ancient scripts and magic, which he took with him on his quest for arcane
knowledge.41 In the Demotic stories, Setne finds the Book of Thoth and becomes acquainted with powerful
knowledge.42 Setne is not just “performing” magic; he represents the literary topos of a learned man who
can control the universe and gain public recognition as magician through the acquisition of a magical
book.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it seems that among the many functions and characteristics of the ritual specialists and
Heka-workers from ancient Egypt, the model that attained the greatest currency and popularity in literary
tales of all periods was that of the learned magician, whose powers come from books and written spells.
Indeed, the magical inner nature of the ancient Egyptian writing certainly plays a role in the prominence
accorded to written magic, the literate magician, and his secret knowledge. Even in the Graeco-Egyptian
Magical Papyri (the so-called PGM and PDM), when charms were written chiefly in Greek and Demotic,
the presence of charaktêres (i.e., non-alphabetic magical signs) and voces magicae (i.e., magical words,
e.g., “abracadabra”) shows how these learned ritualists were manipulating the magical writing in order to
make use of the prestige of their ancient, secret knowledge.43

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Notes
1 On the origin and use of the Greek term mágos, see Graf 2019.
2 See Frankfurter 2019: 6–8.
3 In this article though, the term “magic” and “magicians” will be used anyway as cross-cultural notions

and when referring to rituals and ritual specialists of different kind, whose emic designation in ancient
Egypt remains of dubious translation in English. See Frankfurter 2019: 10–20: “‘Magic’ as a Flexible and
Heuristic Category.”
4 On the general lack of real distinction among magicians, priests and doctors in ancient Egypt, see Theis

2014: 40–46.
5 For a recent overview on the nature and function of Heka, see Dieleman 2019.
6 The use of the male personal pronoun is intentional here, since in general the magician figures we know

from the texts are male. Exceptions to this trend will be discussed below.
7 See Dieleman 2015.
8 See, for instance, the funerary instruction at the end of Spell 100 of the Book of the Dead; see also Bryan

2017: esp. 10.

9 Mauss 2001: 50.
10 Cf. Parkinson 2002.
11 Ritner 1993: 220–222.
12 Rochberg 2017: 64.
13 Ritner 1993: 22 n1026.
14 Ritner 1993: 22 n1027 with references.
15 On John the Grammarian as emissary and magician, see Magdalino/Mavroudi 2006: 123–124;

Magdalino 2009.
16 On the hagiography of Constantine (Cyril by monastic name), see Mavroudi 2015: esp. 41 with

bibliographical references. I wish to thank Maria Mavroudi for providing me with information on the
figures of John the Grammarian and Cyril as experts of occult sciences.
17 Cf. Lucarelli 2017.
18 Dieleman 2019: 98–103.
19 Dieleman 2019: esp. 100 and n41 for further bibliographical references to the figure of the “magician”

in ancient Egyptian literature.

20 On the stereotype of female ritualists as “witches” in ancient societies, see Stratton 2007.
21 On the negative view of Nubia in magical texts, see Koenig 1987.
22 See Ritner 1993: 229–230.
23 On the role of the “wise woman” (Rekhet) see Raven 2012: 31. For evidence of a “wise women” at Deir

el-Medina, see Borghouts 1982: 1–70 and Karl 2000.

24 Theis 2014.

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8/15/2020 The Magician as a Literary Figure in Ancient Egyptian Texts

25 See the contribution of Gina Konstantopoulos.

26 Leitz et al. 2002–2003, vol. 4: 709.
27 The pharaoh, similar to the gods, can also hold the epithet of “Great of Magic” (wr ḥq .w); see Ritnerȝ
1993: 16 n68.
28 Leitz et al. 2002–2003, vol. 2: 493–496.
29 For an overview of these two stories, see Allen 2015: 1–154 with bibliographical references.
30 See Ritner 1993: 48 for the origin of this ancient Egyptian expression.
31 Ritner 1993: 227.
32 See Ritner 1993: 229–230.
33 On the text of the water spell in the Story of the Herdsman and in the Coffin Text spell, see Allen 2015:

363–365. For an overview on the themes of the Story of the Herdsman, see Schneider 2007: esp. 316 for
the reference to the distant goddess. See also Escolano-Poveda 2017.
34 For a translation of the cycle of stories of papyrus Westcar, see Simpson 2003: 13–24; Parkinson 1997:

21–53.
35 Posener 1952.
36 Spells 30B, 64, 137 and 148.
37 Simpson 2003: 18.
38 Parkinson 1997. Simpson 2003 prefers “the shrines of the enclosure of Thoth.” See also Stadler 2009:

80–83.
39 Hornung 1973.
40 Simpson 2003: 386–391.
41 Griffith 1985. On Setne I, in particular on the Pyramid Texts references in the tale, see Ritner in

Simpson 2003: 453–469; Ritner 2010.

42 On the so-called “Book of Thoth” see E. Love’s contribution.
43 On the ritualized manipulation of text and the Graeco-Egyptian charaktêres, see Gordon 2014.

ISAW Papers (ISSN 2164-1471) is a publication of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New
York University. This article was anonymously reviewed prior to publication.

©2020 Rita Lucarelli. Distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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