Scribal Traditions in Coptic Magical Texts

Krisztina Hevesi examines the production, transmission, and use of Coptic magical manuscripts in Egypt from Late Antiquity into the early medieval period, focusing on the edition of manuscripts now preserved in three European collections: the Berlin Magical Archive in the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin, the Institut für Papyrologie in Heidelberg, and the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire in Strasbourg. Combining textual criticism with material analysis, palaeography, and the study of scribal traditions, she investigates how manuscripts were produced, copied, adapted, and used within changing ritual and social contexts. She examines the distinction - and its gradations - between personalized or applied manuscripts and master manuscripts, and identifies intermediate and previously overlooked categories that complicate conventional typologies. Detailed case studies and text editions, including previously unpublished material, provide the basis for contextualizing the manuscripts through comparison of textual content, hands, layouts, inks, physical formats, foldmarks, traces of reuse, and other material features. She argues that the transmission of magical traditions cannot be reconstructed through textual parallels alone, but must also account for material practices, scribal choices, and the social networks through which traditions circulated. Hevesi further traces the role of scriptoria, scribal workshops, ritual practitioners, and regional nodes such as the Fayyum Oasis in the production and transmission of magical traditions. By integrating materiality, scribal traditions, ritual practice, and manuscript typology, the book offers a new framework for understanding how magical knowledge was organized in late antique and early medieval Egypt - and by whom.