*Preorder* Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World Catalogue
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Preorders are available now. Releasing on March 17, 2025.
Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World Catalogue
Edited by Jeffrey Spier, with essays by Gina Konstantopoulos and Foy Scalf.
What is magic? Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World presents a world in which magic was not illusion or sleight of hand but a vital tool for navigating daily life. The essays in this volume reveal how individuals and communities from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome once sought to protect the vulnerable, heal the body, hex adversaries, and even influence the divine. Evidence of these practices spans more than two millennia, from representations of Egyptian rituals performed by priests, to texts used by Babylonian ritual specialists to exorcise demons, to amulets made with gems or papyrus worn by people in the Greek and Roman worlds.
Published to accompany the exhibition of the same name, Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World invites readers to see the ancient world with renewed clarity and to recognize within it the deep human desire to make sense of forces larger than ourselves.
Hardcover, 9 1/2 × 6 3/4 in., 112 pages. 64 color illustrations.
Authors
Jeffrey Spier served as Senior Curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum from 2014 until 2024.
Gina Konstantopoulos is an associate professor in Assyriology and cuneiform studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Foy Scalf is Head of the Research Archives at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago.
Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World Catalogue
Edited by Jeffrey Spier, with essays by Gina Konstantopoulos and Foy Scalf.
What is magic? Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World presents a world in which magic was not illusion or sleight of hand but a vital tool for navigating daily life. The essays in this volume reveal how individuals and communities from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome once sought to protect the vulnerable, heal the body, hex adversaries, and even influence the divine. Evidence of these practices spans more than two millennia, from representations of Egyptian rituals performed by priests, to texts used by Babylonian ritual specialists to exorcise demons, to amulets made with gems or papyrus worn by people in the Greek and Roman worlds.
Published to accompany the exhibition of the same name, Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World invites readers to see the ancient world with renewed clarity and to recognize within it the deep human desire to make sense of forces larger than ourselves.
Hardcover, 9 1/2 × 6 3/4 in., 112 pages. 64 color illustrations.
Authors
Jeffrey Spier served as Senior Curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum from 2014 until 2024.
Gina Konstantopoulos is an associate professor in Assyriology and cuneiform studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Foy Scalf is Head of the Research Archives at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago.
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