Charaktêres (singular: charaktêr) are letter-shaped signs lacking both semantic and phonetic correlations, which were used as magic signs in ancient literary documents.[1]

An onyx intaglio in The Met with charaktêres alongside Greek letters

Forms and use

edit

In her 2013 thesis Kirsten Dzwiza studied 94 magical texts and recorded 699 different charaktêres occurring over 943 times.[2] The character forms are mostly nonsensical and may include ring-letters, balls, points, closed elements, separate strokes, linear elements, small element, and hieroglyphs.[2] The most common forms consists of asterisks and configurations of straight lines with small circles at their ends.[3]

The signs appear mostly on apotropaic spells and phylacteries, but also on a few ancient curse tablets.[1] They may appear as loose groups of characters on a magical gemstone or spell to large groups alongside other figures on a magical text or table.[3] They are often used alongside comprehensible arcane words, like the voces magicae in the texts of the Greek Magical Papyri.[4] Charaktêres were not intended as an alternative-alphabet or code - they were usually used only once or twice in the context of a single spell.[5]

See also

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ a b György Németh (2020). "Charaktêres on Curse Tablets In the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire". In Gordon, R.; Marco Simón, F.; Piranomonte, M. (eds.). Choosing Magic: Contexts, Objects, Meanings: The Archaeology of Instrumental Religion in the Latin West. De Luca Editori d’Arte. pp. 125–138.
  2. ^ a b Kirsten Dzwiza (2013). Schriftverwendung in antiker Ritualpraxis anhand der griechischen, demotischen und koptischen Praxisanleitungen des 1. - 7. Jahrhunderts (Thesis). Universität Erfurt.
  3. ^ a b Frankfurter, David. "The Magic of Writing in Mediterranea Antiquity". Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic. Brill. pp. 626–658.
  4. ^ Edmonds, Radcliffe G. (2019). Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World. Princeton University Press. pp. 337–338.
  5. ^ Gordon, Richard (2014). "CHARAKTÊRES BETWEEN ANTIQUITY AND RENAISSANCE TRANSMISSION AND REINVENTION". In Dasen, V.; Spieser, J.-M. (eds.). Les savoirs magiques et leur transmission de l'antiquite a la Renaissance. pp. 253–300.