BOOK REVIEWS
Serge Sauneron, Le Papyrus Magique Illustre de Brooklyn. The Brooklyn
Museum, Brooklyn, N. Y., 1970. Pp. 29, pls. 10, figs. 3, col. front. $5.
As the third publication in the Brooklyn Museum's Wilbour
Monographs series this work provides an excellent study of a most
interesting magical papyrus. The author singled out this particular
document (Brooklyn Museum 47.218.156) from the Wilbour collection of papyri as it contained two fascinating illustrations and the
text offered a highly original description of the gods portrayed
therein that is unique in papyrological literature. A carefully detailed
physical description of the papyrus contains such minute observations as the darker shade of the black ink at intervals, revealing when
the scribe dipped his pen afresh in the ink and noting the corrections
made either by the scribe himself or a rectifier. Due to difficulties in
dating the papyrus the author has had to base his tentative assignment of the fourth to the third century B.C. largely on the
vocabulary and grammar of the text. He has tried to link unknown
words with Semitic or Nubian counterparts such as the hieratic
h-d-r-t corresponding to the Nubian Hdl or Hdyl, a wild dog. This
would fit well with the description of the monster god portrayed in
the vignette but it is a highly hypothetical argument. As the magical
papyri of this period are most often the work of not very literate
commoners these "foreign" words could just as well be local slang
terms.
In his description of the two monster composite gods in the
illustrations the author refers most accurately to the multiple
"visages" of the gods rather than "tetes" as in this text the exact
translation is face rather than head. However, I wonder why the
author did not mention the two djed clearly shown with the upper
pair of arms in the first vignette. Each hand holds two knives, two
lances, two serpents and one was-sceptre but the djed-pillar, the
symbol of the vertebrate column of Osiris and seen between these
pairs of objects, is not referred to in the author's description
although in his translation of the text (p. 18) this item is included.
It is clear from the text that the scribe meant to invoke a
composite version of the god Bes. Probably the unique combination
