Bonner, SMA – PDF, 17.

to ritual animation is the annual cleansing of certain cult statues.⁴⁶ This may be viewed simply as a practical process, like an annual house cleaning, and with his usual sobriety of judgment, M. P. Nilsson so interprets it; but it is possible that the rite was performed with the purpose of giving renewed life and power to the image. Yet on the whole it is likely that the idea of ritual empsychosis came into magic and theurgy from Egyptian religious custom. Hopfner and Nock have rightly drawn attention to this point, and I owe to them the knowledge of Moret's work Le Rituel du culte divin journalier, which shows that the king as priest was believed to give life to the statue of the god.⁴⁷ The passage cited above from Proclus on the Republic implies that phylacteries were attached to the image as part of the theurgic process of vivifying it. This also indicates Egyptian influence; for as Naville says, in Egypt magic was as necessary to gods as to men.⁴⁸ Ancient sculptures and paintings show the gods carrying the ankh and other amulets, and late Graeco-Egyptian statuettes wear them.⁴⁹

These rites of consecration doubtless help us to understand the cultural background that produced magical amulets, but they are of little or no importance for the interpretation of individual objects. The elaborate procedure described in some passages of the magical papyri seems to have been required in the case of stones meant to be used in an important πρᾶξις; and it is a reasonable conjecture that some elaborate amulets that have come down to us once played a part in a ceremony of more than ordinary importance. It is interesting to recall here that a stone has been published which answers closely to the design prescribed in the “Sword of Dardanus.”⁵⁰ On the other hand, makers and vendors of amulets probably resembled their modern successors in exaggerating, or simply inventing, the elaborate precautions taken to insure the efficacy of their wares. It is impossible to believe that the thousands of magical gems and metal objects that are extant were all prepared with preliminary asceticism and elaborate sacrifices. Besides, we have already seen that in some authorities the “consecration” consists merely in the carving of a divine figure or symbol with or without an inscription.

A word may be said of methods of research in this field. No preparation for the study of Graeco-Egyptian amulets is more important than clearing one's mind of certain long-standing misconceptions. First and perhaps most important among these is the notion that the designs inscribed upon them partly reveal, partly conceal a body of mysterious occult doctrine, and that they affirm the devotion of the wearer to a religious system symbolized by

⁴⁶ Hock, op. cit., p. 83.

⁴⁷ Hopfner, op. cit., I, § 808 ad fin. (p. 217); A. D. Nock, JEA 11 (1925), 155. Moret's work was published in Annales du Musée Guimet, Bibliothèque des Études, 14 (1902), 79–102; note esp. 93–94.

⁴⁸ Hastings, ERE, III, 431 a.

⁴⁹ See Budge, Gods, I, 430 (Hathor); plate opposite 456 (Child Horus); II, 130 and plate opposite (Osiris); 210 (Child Horus); 286 (Bes); Lanzone, Dizionario di mitologia egizia, Pl. 122, i (Merut); Perdrizet, Les Terres cuites ... de la collection Fouquet, Pls. 3, 15; Breccia, Terrecotte figurate del Museo di Alessandria, Nos. 11, 152, 157.

⁵⁰ R. Mouterde, “Le Glaive de Dardanos,” Mélanges Univ. St.-Joseph, 15, 53–64.

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