Sacred Signified: The Semiotics of Statues in the Greek Magical Papyri

This paper explores the spells of the Greek Magical Papyri in which the creation of divine images are described and suggests that there is little evidence for formal animation rituals, per se, and that the core rituals of the papyri exhibit a less specific, more fluid approach to statues. This fluid approach can be understood best if we approach the statues as what Charles Peirce called indices, that is, if we approach the statues as objects that point to the divine without necessarily enunciating a specific relationship between the physical statue and the god it represented. An attempt to understand these spells and their statues using this semiotic model allows for a wider range of interpretations regarding interactions with the sacred that are not limited to statue animation alone.