A Handbook of a Kherep-Selket from the Tomb of Iufaa: The Book of Primeval Snakes

Summary The Late Period shaft tombs at Abusir are located in the North-Western part of the Abusir necropolis and were built during a rather short span of time at the very end of 26th Dynasty, between 530 and perhaps 525 BC. Among those, the tomb of Iufaa stands out by its size and by the extent of its interior decoration. Significant amount of the decorated space in Iufaa’s burial chamber were reserved for a series of texts and images that may be best denoted as a “Snake Encyclopedia”. The individual parts of this textual corpus cover the main parts of the arch of the western wall in the burial chamber of Iufaa. The opposite side of the burial chamber, the arch of the eastern wall, bears two texts (accompanied with images) that concern Underworld/divine snakes as well. Although this “encyclopedia” of Underworld serpentine beings still provides us with much more questions and puzzles than answers and insights, it also sheds a new light upon the religion, cult and afterlife beliefs of the Saite-Persian and Graeco-Roman Egypt. It witnesses the importance of giant snakes or primeval creatures in serpentine form that were believed to dwell in the Underworld and were directly linked to cosmogony and periodical renewal of the sun and of the world. As manifestations of Re and Osiris, the snakes become lords of life and death, hypostaseis of the cyclically rejuvenated Creator. The idea of renewal and rebirth is also closely connected with ritual purity and purification rites. Thus, the “Snake Encyclopedia” is accompanied by a corpus dedicated to the ritual cleansing of the pharaoh and of the deceased, which is represented textually and pictorially on the northern wall of Iufaa’s burial chamber and which features serpentine primordial beings as well. But the focus on not generally transmitted, pre-cosmological concepts is connected to yet another important aspect of the composition and other texts from Iufaa’s tomb, that have most probably served as a compendium of secret knowledge for the magicians of Selket. This motif helps us to interpret one of the main tasks of the composition in focus: it probably served to accumulate and transmit sacred knowledge and to use it to ensure that the deceased would be accepted into the blessed Afterlife.

Are Puns Mere? Christine Brooke-Rose's Amalgamemnon

This article will explore the relationship between linguistic puns and knowledge, in particular puns in Christine Brooke-Rose's work, and what they tell us about knowledge: secret knowledge; encoded knowledge; latent knowledge that remains latent; and the refusal of knowledge. My title is an allusion to Frank Kermode's 1967 essay ‘Objects, Jokes, and Art’, where he puzzles away at his own difficulty with distinguishing avant garde writing and art, especially what he calls the ‘neo-avant garde’ of the 60s, from jokes. ‘I myself believe’, he writes anxiously, ‘that there is a difference between art and a joke’, admitting that ‘it has sometimes been difficult to tell.’ Brooke-Rose, whose work Kermode admired, is a perfect example of this. Her texts revolve around the pun, the surprise juxtaposition between semantic poles, the unexpected yoking together of disparate elements. Puns, for Brooke-Rose, sit at the juncture between the accidental and the overdetermined. So what is funny about the pun? Not much, I propose, or rather, it provokes a particular sort of ambivalent laughter which becomes folded into the distinctive character and affective potency of late modernism itself: its deadpan silliness; its proclivity to collision and violence; its excitability and its melancholy. Brooke-Rose's humour is thus of the difficult sort, that is, humour that reveals itself at the moment of its operation to be not all that funny. The unsettling laughter, I propose, that exposes literature's own incommensurability with itself. For Jacques Rancière, the novel must illuminate somehow the ‘punctuation of the encounter with the inconceivable’, in the face of which all is reduced to passivity. The pun, in particular, forces the readers’ passivity, and exposes us to limits of what can be known.

Presence of Witchcraft in the Contemporary Udmurt Village

Based on the author’s fieldwork materials (2007–2021) as well as on sources from scientific literature, this article examines how wizards and witches are seen in today’s Udmurt village. It analyses the characters of these magic specialists within the framework of folk understanding. It explains their role, their activities and their status in the village community, it presents magical methods of combat and self-defence, as well as some trends of late years. The latest field materials show the present narratives about people who master magic strength and secret knowledge, updating the research. This new material highlights the innovative character of the research. The results allow us to say that alongside traditional understandings, there are relatively new cultural phenomena appearing at practically all the levels of the village perception of wizards and witches. The changes in the present world and the ‘fashion’ for magic knowledge give the village community a new focus on tradition. For example, people think that electricity cables, as well as mobile phone networks and satellite antennas, have started to disturb the flights of wizards and witches, and elements from other cultures have been added to magic apotropaic repertoire, etc. Thus, this article follows what is happening presently in Udmurt village communities with regard to the cultural mythical phenomena surrounding the worldview of magical specialists. The results of this research may be a useful basis for further research, and it will be important to observe the further evolution in the village reception of these phenomena.

Magic in the Graeco-Roman World

Magic in the Graeco-Roman world is a disputed concept among modern historians, whose interpretation has changed significantly over the last 200 years of study. In studying it we may either focus on terms from ancient languages translatable as “magic,” or examine materials and practices that may be classified as “magic” according to modern definitions. Ancient terminology centers around terms such as the Greek word mageia, and its Latin cognate magia, referring to superhuman practices that often involved the manipulation of the natural and divine worlds through secret knowledge and ritual. Objects identified by modern scholars as magical include curse tablets, written objects intended to injure, bind, or render harmless their victims, magical handbooks written on papyrus, providing instructions for rituals, and amulets, often in the form of semiprecious stones inscribed with images of deities and short texts. While some of these practices are reflected in ancient literary sources discussing magic, literary texts also show an exaggerated discourse, in which magic-users may be stereotyped according to their ethnicity (exotic magicians from Egypt, Syria, or Judaea) or gender (lurid images of witches), and practices are depicted as fantastical and extreme, involving acts such as human sacrifice. Popular images of magic and actual practice come together in laws and regulations against magic and its users, primarily from the period of the Roman Empire. These may be in the form of imperial law, or else Christian and non-Christian cultic rules, which prescribe social exclusion or even death, so that accusations of magic could be a potent tool in social conflicts.

Sacred and Profane: Tabooing in Russian Magical Manuscripts of the 17th–18th Centuries (Incantations and Herbals)

Linguistic taboos (euphemisms, omissions, and other) are an essential part of Slavic verbal and written culture. In this article, we analyze cryptography as a form of tabooing in the magical texts of the grassroots manuscript tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries (handwritten incantations and herbals). Our main objective is trying to see a system behind separate examples and define which kinds of texts are usually tabooed in incantations and herbals, their topics, and messages. We have managed to find out that the function of keeping secrecy is not relevant for the magical tradition; rather, encryption was used to emphasize the elements that are of special importance. In the book of incantations called the Olonets Codex, dating back to the 17th century, ciphering was used for the names and titles of sacred and demonological characters, antagonists, descriptions of certain rituals, closing phrases for the incantations (amen, “key”), etc. We hypothesize that the encryption is used in the Olonets Codex as a means of retaining the magical strength of all the texts in the manuscripts, protecting from hostile beings, sacralizing where necessary, tabooing what was considered sinful for religious reasons, accentuating the main meanings of the incantations, etc. In the herbals, cryptography is basically used for tabooing of “sinful” or trappy topics (love magic, magic used against courts and authorities, some contexts concerning sorcery, jinx, and “secret” knowledge), and in the texts that had to bear sacral meaning (incantations and prayers).

Are we there yet? A review of proposed Aboriginal cultural heritage laws in New South Wales, Australia

This article examines the extent to which a recent law reform initiative in New South Wales (NSW), Australia—the draft Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill 2018 (NSW)—advances the general principles outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The examination reveals some improvements on the current legal framework and some concerning proposals that distance the NSW government from the UNDRIP principles. Key concerns include a proposed transfer of administrative responsibility to Aboriginal bodies with no corresponding guarantee of funding; the continued vesting of key decision-making powers in government; inept provisions for the protection of secret knowledge; and lower penalties for harming cultural heritage than for related offences in existing environmental and planning legislation. Given the bill’s weaknesses, the article explores pragmatic alternatives to better advance the UNDRIP principles.

Games prisoners do not play: against the Hobbes-Zimbardo approach of unmitigated prison violence

I analyze institutions of prison subculture that mitigate potential violent confrontations among inmates, in contrast to Hobbesian-Zimbardo default spontaneous violence. The games that are relatively rarely played in prison are Chicken and other violent confrontation games. Incoming rookie inmates are subject to initiation tests that allocate them into different subcultural groups, which signals their toughness and disincentivizes fighting. Most experienced inmates develop the eristic skills utilizing prison argot, use informal conflict adjudicators, and fake aggression toward rookies. All inmates form defensive coalitions. Finally, when inmates commit self-injuries, they follow well-rehearsed protocols to minimize the damage to their bodies and to maximize the impression made on the authorities. The secret knowledge of the associated rules, tricks, and cons is passed down over generations of prisoners through informal schooling. The material for this study comes from two Polish prisons, where the author spent 5 months as a political prisoner in 1985.

Жабракi ў пахавальных i памiнальных абрадах беларусаў Падзвiння (па матэрыялах ХIХ – пачатку ХХI стагоддзя)

On the basis of folklore and ethnographic material of the 19th – early 21st century the symbolic status and ritual functions of beggars in funeral and memorial rites of Belarusian Dvina region are discussed. The beggars represent a peculiar social group, the specificity of which is most expressively manifested in the ritual forms of behavior, including the funeral and memorial rites of the dead. The reasons of their inclusion into the ritual sphere (through the analysis of such characteristics as poverty, physical deviations, blindness, special appearance, possession of secret knowledge, the nature of their “activity”, isolated lifestyle) are presented. The article deals with the status and ritual functions of beggars in the funeral rites and rites of the memorial cycle (within a year from the date of death and calendar holidays). New field material is involved in the study, part of which is fixed by the author. The results of the research will be useful in the study of worldviews and beliefs.

Notes on the beekeeping tradition in Polesie (based on materials from the Polesie archive)

An essay on beekeeping in Polesie, one of the archaic Slavic zones, was written on material collected in the 1970s — 1980s in expeditions of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the leadership of N. I. Tolstoy according to the program of the Polesie Ethnolinguistic Atlas and stored in the archives of the Department of Ethnolinguistics and Folklore of the Institute. The Polesie program is focused mainly on traditional spiritual culture: on ritual and magical practices, beliefs, apotropaic magic and prohibitions associated with breeding bees and the extraction of honey and wax, on the symbolism of bees, etc. In the complex of magical actions, customs and beliefs associated with beekeeping in Polesie, honey hunting and pagan beliefs that have survived until recently, Christian symbolism and very late innovations of a commercial and trade, scientific and economic nature collide and intertwine. The pagan and Christian principles coexist peacefully in beekeeping practice, complementing each other (the holiness of the bee and its Mother of God symbolism are consistent with its role as a kind, tireless toiler who benefits people), while the inclusion of beekeeping in the sphere of trade relations sometimes gives rise to mutually exclusive customs and ideas. Beekeeping occupies a special place in the system of folk culture. Due to its corporatism and autonomy, this cultural sphere not only became a repository of ancient traditions and archaic strata of beliefs, but also was distinguished by a special susceptibility to the influence of book culture. All this endowed the figure of the beekeeper with the features of sacredness as a bearer of secret knowledge accessible only to the initiated.