Monday, December 14, 2015

That Coptic magical handbook

COPTIC WATCH: Thousand-year-old ‘Egyptian Handbook of Ritual Power’ deciphered (Nina Awad, StepFeed).
Researchers at the Macquarie universities in New South Wales, Australia, gave deciphered a 1,300-year-old Egyptian manuscript believed to be a manual on how to use and create magical spells.

The manuscript, which has been dubbed the “Egyptian Handbook of Ritual Power” by scientific researchers and scholars, was first found by a merchant in the late ’70s and though numerous attempts were made to decode the contexts of the ancient document, all attempts seemed fruitless.

With 20 pages deciphered, researchers believe that due to the way it was written, the handbook most likely came from some place in Upper Egypt and was probably created by a member of the Sethians, a minority group that worshiped Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve.

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The publication of the manuscript was noted here in November, but this article has additional information.