Taxonomies of Illnesses and the Dynamics of Cursing and Healing the Body in Christian Egypt

Bibliographic Data

ID21819381
AuthorsMarkéta Preininger (0000-0001-5862-341X, University of Würzburg, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume17
Issue1
Pages162-183
Publication date2025-07-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTrends in Classics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1866-7473 • E-ISSN: 1866-7481
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/tc-2025-0008
OpenAlexW4412394746
LanguageEN
References cited27

The Coptic magical corpus, a collection of manuscripts produced in Egypt between the fourth and twelfth centuries CE for private ritual purposes, provides a rich source concerning non-institutional and private healing practices. Because the magical healing manuscripts from the corpus are not self-reflexive, unlike Hippocratic writings, the work of interpretation and reconstruction of the taxonomies of the healing practices is left to modern researchers. The researcher has several etic interrelated categories to understand and interpret: symptoms (i.e., tooth pain), causes (i.e., evil spirits), and treatments (i.e., binding of an amulet to the forearm). In understanding the relationships between these three categories, the modern reader might more easily comprehend the logic of healing practices witnessed by the corpus. However, not only healing texts provide an insight into the causes of diseases, but also curses causing them (called here health curses). In this article, I discuss and compare both of these corpora and focus especially on lists of illnesses and agents causing them, as they appear in both healing texts and health curses

Aesthetics · Art · Emic and etic · Hippocratic Oath · Linguistics · Literature · Reflexivity · Sociology · Anthropology · Families in Therapy and Culture · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · History of Medicine Studies · Philosophy · Psychology

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access