Dr. Sofía Torallas Tovar (University of Chicago) to speak on “Scribes and Wizards: Materiality of Greco Egyptian Magical Handbooks”

Use this link for Zoom registration: https://psu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BNQfOUZjRiyY1BpQKOOKng#/registration 

This lecture will discuss how the analysis of materiality and scribal practice of the Greco-Egyptian Magical Handbooks on Papyrus provides a window into the sources and the compilation of magical knowledge in Antiquity.

Sofía Torallas Tovar, Ph.D. (1995), is Professor of Classics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Since 2002, she is the curator of the papyrus collection at the Abbey of Montserrat, where she has not only catalogued and restored, but also published the texts of many of the papyri stored there, in Greek, Latin and Coptic.  As co-PI of the project “Transmission of Magical Knowledge: Magical handbooks on papyrus,” funded since 2015 by the Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago, she has spearheaded with her colleague Christopher Faraone the re-edition and analysis of 88 magical handbooks from Greco-Roman Egypt.

Co-sponsored with the Religious Studies Minor