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Hex marks the spot: An exhibition explores how magic has evolved
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Tour some of our earliest efforts to control the uncontrollable and understand the unexplained, through 75 artefacts from across 3,000 years.
Wands, spellbooks, figurines… an exhibition that opened at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, and has since travelled to New York, explores how magic, in its earliest avatars, wasn’t about trickery at all, but about belief — and traces how that belief changed over time.
“The idea of magic is likely as old as mankind itself,” says Jeffrey Spier, curator of Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World. Over five years, he has tracked down artefacts that represent that idea, from as far back Ancient Egypt, 4,500 years ago.
Some are on loan from the British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others. Most have roots in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, and parts of the Mediterranean.
Among the 75 artefacts on display are sculptures in stone and bronze, amulets in gold and silver, an Egyptian clay bowl inscribed with a letter to the dead, and a “curse figure” made of clay and commissioned by a pharaoh, to put a hex on a foreign king. Together, they tell the story of some of our earliest efforts to control the uncontrollable, and understand the unexplained.
Spier, formerly a senior curator of antiquities at the J Paul Getty Museum, has been fascinated by Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman magic for decades, he says. “The most surprising aspect, I suppose, is how widespread it was. Many individuals turned to magicians for love, or cursing.”
Ivory wands were inscribed with spells to protect newborns. Amulets were worn in Ancient Greece not just for protection but for help securing someone’s affections too.
Take a quick tour of some of the most intriguing artefacts on display.
* Ivory wand or birth tusk; c. 2000 BCE
These wands were used to protect pregnant women and newborns in Ancient Egypt. Carved into the ivory were processions of fierce, weapon-wielding deities and protective demons such as Taweret, the pregnant-hippopotamus goddess of childbirth. Phrases such as “Protection of day” and “Protection of night” were inscribed on them too. They were likely worn by the mother.
* Mask of Humbaba; c. 2000 BCE
In Mesopotamian mythology and the famous Sumerian poem Epic of Gilgamesh (the oldest surviving piece of narrative literature), Humbaba was the giant appointed to guard a sacred forest. He was famously an antagonist, slain by the hero Gilgamesh. But his face carried profound ritual significance. Masks like this one were widely used as protective charms, worn on the body or displayed in homes to ward off evil spirits.
* The Maqlu series; c. 700 BCE
This eight-tablet text holds nearly 100 spells, speaks of exorcists in Ancient Mesopotamia, and contains instructions for a ritual performed over the course of one night in the month of Abu (July-August), when spirits roamed between our realm and the netherworld, making them especially vulnerable to incantations.
* Statuette of Heka; c. 2400 BCE
Magic, medicine and the life force (ka) come together in Heka, shown wearing the attire of a pharaoh and holding a staff with two twisted serpents wrapped around it. In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that Heka gave gods and humans the power to make things happen. Cursing enemies, curing the sick, creating life were all viewed as manifestations of this force.
What’s interesting about this statue is that it offers early evidence of the codification of magic. This deity is mentioned in religious and funerary writings, and in medical texts.
* Amulet of Lamashtu; 700 BCE
In Mesopotamian mythology, this demon-goddess was a malevolent being who preyed on pregnant women. Amulets were worn to protect mothers and infants from her. They typically carried a carving of the demon, with her wings, lion’s head, and bird talons for feet. Also on the amulet was text that typically beseeched numerous deities to keep the “exalted lady” away.
* Stela of Horus; 330 BCE
Tablets of this type, in various sizes, show the Egyptian child-god Horus overcoming creatures that represent illness or evil forces. Protective incantations and healing spells are typically scrawled all over them. The sick poured water over tablets like these and drank it, hoping to be protected or healed.
* Magical gem with Chnoubis; 2nd century CE
In Ancient Rome, images of Graeco-Egyptian deities such as the lion-headed serpent Chnoubis (famed for curing ailments) were carved into semiprecious stones. These were then inscribed with names of other deities and healing chants, written in Greek. “The eclectic blending of Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures is remarkable evidence of ancient globalisation,” says Spier.
* Curse tablet from Sicily; c. 500 BCE
Soft lead was chosen for curse tablets, which were common across the Greek world, because this material was believed to possess “binding” properties. People wrote names or grievances on them with a stylus, folded them, pierced them with iron nails, and abandoned them in spaces such as graves or wells, so they could reach the deities of the underworld.
In one thin lead sheet that forms part of the exhibition (scan the QR code alongside to see it), lines of Doric Greek offer a glimpse into a dispute between four men in Sicily. In addition to hiring a professional speechwriter to craft a persuasive speech for the courts, where their dispute was being heard, a professional curse writer was hired by at least one of the men. As was the norm at the time.
Through these eras, magic was already undergoing a transformation.
In Ancient Egypt, it was considered holy and an extension of religion, with rites performed by priests. In Mesopotamia, it was considered a rational means of seeing into the future and appeasing gods. Sorcery performed to inflict harm was frowned upon, but magic used for protection and divination was not.
“Despite the similarity of magical practices, the social perceptions of magic varied from culture to culture,” says Spier. “By the time of Ancient Greece and Rome, around the 5th century BCE, magicians were not part of religion and were generally regarded by the elite as disreputable, immoral or fraudulent.”
Magic came to be spoken of as manipulation, for selfish or malicious reasons. Philosophers of the time, such as Plato, denounced practitioners as shysters and frauds.
As new religions such as Christianity and Islam came to dominate, amid new waves of scientific discovery, sorcery would fade from the mainstream.
Quietly, certain practises live on nonetheless. The threat of the evil eye is still feared; modern medicine is supplemented by the assumed powers of amulets, spells, semi-precious stones and incantations.
“Magic has always functioned as a tool of agency for those who feel helpless,” Spier says. “The fact that some of it is still practised in earnest says something.”
(Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World is on display at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York, until December 13)
