corundum, treatments.6, gems, early gemology, recipe book, Egypt, Greece, Rome

This is the full version of the Leyden Papyrus, the largest known Greco-Egyptian magical text. While there is already an English translation of it online at the ‘Sacred Texts’ website, it lacks several magical figures and characters in the original demotic text (an exact reproduction thereof may be found at http://www.etana.org, in the ‘Core Texts’ section). I have added the original illustrations in this version, and have corrected the magical names from the Coptic glosses found in the original papyrus. The formatting has also been improved, to facilitate reading, and some fragmentary passages have been emended using an updated translation (see Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation including the Demotic Spells, pgs. 195 ff.). Magical names and formulae have been capitalized. The Leyden Papyrus contains many rituals for scrying, invocation of Gods, divination, and many other uses, as practiced in Greco-Roman Egypt. As such, it is a valuable addition to the corpus of Western magical literature.