Materiality and Presence of Magical Signs between Antiquity and the Middle Ages (A03)

• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: from 2011 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 178035969

Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages, magic was an important part both of everyday religious perceptions and of specialist knowledge. Belief in the power of signs and the objects that bore them constituted, along with ritual practice, magic’s area of influence. During the first phase of this subproject, emphasis was placed on magical signs and sequences of signs, and their relationship to material substrates; the second phase dealt in this context with protection from evil and communication with higher powers; in the third phase the focus will turn to practices employed for the purpose of winning favour and achieving justice.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 933: Material Text Cultures. Materiality and Presence of Writing in Non-Typographic Societies
• Applicant Institution: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
• Project Heads: Professorin Dr. Andrea Jördens; Professor Dr. Thomas Meier, until 6/2019; Professor Dr. Joachim Friedrich Quack