Papers by Drew Wilburn
Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, 2019
Building Ritual Agency: Foundations, Floors, Doors, and Walls explores the ways in which the arch... more Building Ritual Agency: Foundations, Floors, Doors, and Walls explores the ways in which the architecture of a building was leveraged to ensure the safety, stability, and sanctity of structures and the residents within. The chapter charts the construction of buildings and how these processes might intersect with ritual protection, from selecting the site, to creating the foundation, and erecting the structure. Turning next to architectural decoration and movable objects, the chapter explores apotropaic imagery and textual records of rituals. Emphasizing the complex interplay between ritual and architecture, the chapter explores how ancient people used ritual practices to shape their physical world and interact with the supernatural forces they believed influenced their lives.
The 1924-1935 University of Michigan excavations at the Graeco-Roman period Egyptian village of K... more The 1924-1935 University of Michigan excavations at the Graeco-Roman period Egyptian village of Karanis yielded thousands of artifacts and extensive archival records of their context. The Karanis material in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology and the University of Michigan Library Papyrology Collection forms a unique body of information for understanding life in an agricultural village in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. In 2011 and 2012, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology presented the exhibition Karanis Revealed in two parts, using artifacts from the excavations and archival material to explore aspects of the site and its excavation in the 1920s and 1930s. As preparation for the exhibition progressed, it became clear that part of the story of the Michigan Karanis expedition lay in the current and ongoing research on the material it yielded by curators, faculty, staff, and students from the University of Michigan. Such projects include new work on known artifacts and papyri, the discovery or...
Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, 2019
Discusses the use of images – statuary, figurines, paintings, and so on -- in a variety of ritual... more Discusses the use of images – statuary, figurines, paintings, and so on -- in a variety of ritual practices in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds. The chapter surveys uses of images chronologically to show several themes: images used to “force” a god to accomplish something; images meant simply to receive or witnessing the performance of a ritual; and the nature and function of iconographic representation itself. The essential ritual function of images in ancient ritual offer an important context for uses of figurines and statuary in more private ritual contexts
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Egypt disgorged a wealth of papyri that... more During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Egypt disgorged a wealth of papyri that flooded the antiquities market, and subsequently, these documents entered the collections of museums and research institutions around the world. 2 Some of this material came to light through accidental discovery or targeted treasure hunting; other caches of papyri were found during excavations. Early excavations varied widely in terms of their attention to provenance and findspots. 3 The material discovered during these early explorations became the foundation upon which researchers in European and North American institutions built the discipline of papyrology. Although discoveries of papyri during controlled excavations in the contemporary period offer exciting opportunities and supply researchers with new and useful sources of data, many papyrologists continue to publish texts from the collections established more than 100 years ago. This material should, of course, be published, but we are often faced by two discrete kinds of papyri: those irreparably divorced from their ancient environments, and those that can be investigated as part of a larger assemblage of materials, that is, within their geographic and physical context. Recent work in both papyrology and archaeology has emphasized this idea of context-understanding how objects, texts and architecture interact on the micro and macro levels-that is, in an individual room, insula, site, or region. 4 The value of such an approach is readily apparent, but the absence of sources of contextual data for many of the papyri in collections worldwide presents a similarly conspicuous problem. For some papyri, the problem of contextual study in insoluble-we have no information on findspots or associated artifacts. Other texts-especially those discovered in early excavations-can be linked to contextual data, but the process of doing so is daunting and laden with problems of access: maps and plans must be located and interpreted, dusty excavation records must be unearthed, and artifacts must be identified and perhaps cleaned. Essentially, the problem lies in collecting and accessing disparate sources of data that have sometimes been disassociated because of disciplinary boundaries. At the
The Proceedings of the 25th International Congress of Papyrology, 2010
Material Approaches to Roman Magic: Occult Objects and Supernatural Substances, 2018
In the early 1970's, the Musée du Louvre purchased a small, unbaked mud figurine, a clay vessel, ... more In the early 1970's, the Musée du Louvre purchased a small, unbaked mud figurine, a clay vessel, and a lead tablet that was said to be from Egypt (Illustration 18.1).1 The object depicts a woman on her knees, with her arms and hands twisted behind her back. Thirteen iron pins pierce the clay figurine at significant points in its anatomy-the scalp, the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the chest or heart, the pudenda, the soles of the feet, the hands and the anus. The tablet that accompanied the figurine records a complicated spell to force a woman named Ptolemais to love Sarapammon. The publication of this remarkable object by P. du Bourget, conservator of the Départment des Antiquités égyptiennes, soon followed in 1975; the inscription on the tablet was published the following year by S. Kambitsis.2 This figurine was modeled with attention to specific anatomical and portraitlike features, including hairstyle and jewelry. Scholarly interest and debate has raged over the object because of its similarity to a set of spell instructions preserved in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris, (P. Bib. Nat. Supp. gr. no. 574 = PGM IV 296-466), a text dated to the fourth or fifth century ce.3 Ancient ritual 1 I would like to thank my research students at Oberlin College, including Gabriel Baker ('07), Ploy Keener ('08), Christopher Motz ('08), and Eush Tayco ('08) for their assistance in preparing this manuscript. Two colleagues, Andaleeb Banta, Curator of Western Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, and Matthew Rarey, Assistant Professor of Art History, provided guidance as I thought about the role and function of representation in art. I am indebted to the editors, David Frankfurter and Henk Versnel, for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I also wish to recognize the Thomas F. Cooper Fund for Classics Faculty Research at Oberlin College, which provided extensive support for acquiring the images that illustrate this essay.
Religion in the Roman Empire
Karanis Revealed: Discovering the Past and Present of a Michigan Excavation in Egypt, 2014
In antiquity, magic seldom was performed for the sake of entertainment: no rabbits were pulled fr... more In antiquity, magic seldom was performed for the sake of entertainment: no rabbits were pulled from hats, nor were buildings rendered invisible. Instead, individuals turned to magic in order to address personal crises, such as easing a recurrent illness , winning a court case, or enticing a lover's affection. Through the analysis of artifacts and their archaeological contexts, the excavated material from Karanis offers a unique opportunity to situate magical practice in a local community.
Excavation of a house at Karanis in the 1924-1925 season unearthed a small, rather mundane scrap ... more Excavation of a house at Karanis in the 1924-1925 season unearthed a small, rather mundane scrap of papyrus (P.Mich.inv. 4604, object 111 above; Litinas and Cook forthcoming). Dating to the early 5th century AD, this innocuous text is a receipt for the delivery of grain for tax purposes. By itself the receipt is neither unique nor particularly informative, but recognizing that the papyrus was excavated at Karanis allows us to draw important conclusions about the inhabitants of the site in the later years of the settlement.
The archaeology of Graeco-Roman Egypt and its sister-discipline papyrology were born together fro... more The archaeology of Graeco-Roman Egypt and its sister-discipline papyrology were born together from the same colonial stew of illicit and sanctioned excavations that produced massive quantities of papyri and artifacts from Egypt during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1920's, a small number of researchers began to record findspots and stratigraphic levels for the artifacts that were added to the collections of their respective institutions and to produce cohesive syntheses of the papyri and other objects brought out of Egypt. The following decades, however, were marked by processual trends that solidified methodological and philosophical divides between the two disciplines as each sought to define its role in the creation of knowledge about Egypt's Graeco-Roman past. The disciplinary divide became more pronounced, so that, by the 1990's, much of the cross-disciplinary dialogue consisted of accusations of neglect for the concerns of the other field.
In this paper, we address the sources of this divergence through historiographic analysis and consider interdisciplinary commonalities by exploring the mutual concern with the contextualization of papyri and artifacts. In particular, we address the spatial, temporal, ideational and textual considerations that papyrologists and archaeologists employ in their search for meaning and interpretive frameworks, as well as the investigative ramifications of objects and texts that have been stripped of their physical context. Throughout our discussion, we regard context as not merely the recognition of physical association and patterns, but as part of an investigative apparatus for creating and debating meaning within both disciplines.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Egypt disgorged a wealth of papyri that... more During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Egypt disgorged a wealth of papyri that flooded the antiquities market, and subsequently, these documents entered the collections of museums and research institutions around the world. 2 Some of this material came to light through accidental discovery or targeted treasure hunting; other caches of papyri were found during excavations. Early excavations varied widely in terms of their attention to provenance and findspots. 3 The material discovered during these early explorations became the foundation upon which researchers in European and North American institutions built the discipline of papyrology. Although discoveries of papyri during controlled excavations in the contemporary period offer exciting opportunities and supply researchers with new and useful sources of data, many papyrologists continue to publish texts from the collections established more than 100 years ago. This material should, of course, be published, but we are often faced by two discrete kinds of papyri: those irreparably divorced from their ancient environments, and those that can be investigated as part of a larger assemblage of materials, that is, within their geographic and physical context.
In antiquity, magic seldom was performed for the sake of entertainment: no rabbits were pulled fr... more In antiquity, magic seldom was performed for the sake of entertainment: no rabbits were pulled from hats, nor were buildings rendered invisible. Instead, individuals turned to magic in order to address personal crises, such as easing a recurrent illness, winning a court case, or enticing a lover's affection. The Graeco-Roman Mediterranean was rife with magical solutions to individual dilemmas, which existed alongside, or even as part of, traditional religion. Through the analysis of artifacts and their archaeological contexts, the excavated material from Karanis offers a unique opportunity to situate magical practice in a local community.
Book Reviews by Drew Wilburn
Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews, 2025
This review of Anna Lucille Boozer’s At Home in Roman Egypt: A Social Archaeology, focuses on the... more This review of Anna Lucille Boozer’s At Home in Roman Egypt: A Social Archaeology, focuses on the contents of the book and its salient features.
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Papers by Drew Wilburn
In this paper, we address the sources of this divergence through historiographic analysis and consider interdisciplinary commonalities by exploring the mutual concern with the contextualization of papyri and artifacts. In particular, we address the spatial, temporal, ideational and textual considerations that papyrologists and archaeologists employ in their search for meaning and interpretive frameworks, as well as the investigative ramifications of objects and texts that have been stripped of their physical context. Throughout our discussion, we regard context as not merely the recognition of physical association and patterns, but as part of an investigative apparatus for creating and debating meaning within both disciplines.
Book Reviews by Drew Wilburn
In this paper, we address the sources of this divergence through historiographic analysis and consider interdisciplinary commonalities by exploring the mutual concern with the contextualization of papyri and artifacts. In particular, we address the spatial, temporal, ideational and textual considerations that papyrologists and archaeologists employ in their search for meaning and interpretive frameworks, as well as the investigative ramifications of objects and texts that have been stripped of their physical context. Throughout our discussion, we regard context as not merely the recognition of physical association and patterns, but as part of an investigative apparatus for creating and debating meaning within both disciplines.