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  • Scriptural Incipits on Amulets from Late Antique Egypt: Text, Typology, and Theory by Joseph E. Sanzo
  • Malcolm Choat
Joseph E. Sanzo Scriptural Incipits on Amulets from Late Antique Egypt: Text, Typology, and Theory Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014 Pp. xiv + 219. €64.00.

This revised 2012 doctoral thesis provides the focused study of the role and function of incipits in papyrus amulets that the author asserts is crucial to a full understanding of late antique ritual practice. Sanzo’s book remedies the brevity of earlier treatments with a dedicated treatment underpinned by questions that enlarge the conceptual scope of previous approaches: On what did the perceived power of these words rest? What is the relationship of the incipits to both the textual units from which they come and those in which they are embedded? What was the nature of this power they wielded, both as referents to—and representatives of—scripture, and as physical artifacts?

The methodological centerpiece of the book is a metonymic analysis of the incipits derived from linguistic theory, which accommodates the multivalency of intentions and uses within the wide range of apotropaic and curative texts in which the incipits are encountered. In analyzing the amulets, Sanzo turns away from the typological construction of the “Christian” amulet, arguing that even classification of elements of texts as “Christian” (cf. “pagan,” “Graeco-Egyptian,” or “Jewish”) represents a retrograde step for the understanding of these texts, their composers and users, and the world in which they were created and used. [End Page 146]

Most previous scholarship on the issue (3–8) has argued that the incipits derive their power by reference to the larger text from which they are drawn. Chapter One problematizes this “relation pars pro toto,” arguing that the specialist called to mind a particular thematic unit within the referent scripture, and that incipits of large multiunit works (e.g. gospels) should be treated differently from those of discrete textual units (e.g. Psalms, the Lord’s Prayer). Chapter Two uses a “Hierarchical approach to the scriptures on amulets” (55), along with invoking the rise of the miscellany codex, to help explain the preference for certain textual reference points. Further investigation of this intriguing idea might acknowledge more clearly than Sanzo does that those “miscellaneous” codices we possess from late antique Egypt normally feature collections of entire works of scripture, rather than the excepts that Sanzo’s discussion seems to envisage. Such an investigation might profitably begin with a closer look at texts previously identified as lectionaries.

A catalog of 25 multiunit and 37 single unit corpora of incipits is given in Chapters Three and Four. The former are nearly all gospel incipits, the latter overwhelmingly from the Psalms (including 18 of Psalm 90). The catalog extends beyond amulets on papyrus and other moveable surfaces to include some dipinti and inscriptions (nos. 1–2, 14, 55). Chapter Five distinguishes the use of incipits per se and citations of the opening line of a work as an independent textual unit, allowing the status of “certainly an incipit” to only 30 of the 63 potential cases listed in the catalog (147–48, Table 2).

Sanzo’s overarching analysis in Chapter Six places patristic testimony alongside that of the papyri to draw conclusions with relevance to the wider Mediterranean. He highlights that in the corpus as it is extant (i.e., in which the vast majority of such objects proceed from Egypt), “the ritual deployment of incipits of multiunit corpora appears to be limited to Greek-and Coptic-speaking communities and restricted to Egyptian ritual culture” (177).

The thesis in the book is convincingly argued, and the book’s formal presentation is a credit to both author and publisher. One might nevertheless wish that something could have been said on two crucial issues. First, what are “amulets”? While Sanzo makes useful remarks on the validity of the other typological classifications, he assumes without argument the existence of this one. That there are real ancient textual categories to which this modern label responds (e.g. φυλακτήριον) does not change the fact that editorial laziness has tended to assign things to it too easily in some cases. Second, the “ritual specialists” who...

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