Ancient Egyptian Demonology: Studies on the Boundaries between the Demonic and the Divine in Egyptian Magic ed. by Panagiotis Kousoulis (review)

This volume collects the papers presented at a symposium on ancient Egyptian demonology held in Rhodes in 2003. Despite the publication delay, the assembled essays deal with still up-to-date issues in demonology and magic. As mentioned in the introduction (xv), the two sections of the book reflect the two main thematic sessions of the symposium: the first one (“Demons and Personification”) dealing with a theoretical discussion on the nature and function of demons in society and religion, with the second one focusing on magic and rituals. This second section would perhaps have been better placed at the beginning of the book in order to serve as general introduction on magic before getting into the more specific topic of the ancient Egyptian beliefs in demons and of the magical rituals directed to them.

The introductory essay has been written by Panagiotis Kousoulis, who is also the book’s editor and organizer of the symposium; his expertise in the field of ancient Egyptian demonology is evident in the detailed and very informative way he deals with the debated issue of definition of the demonic versus the divine in the ancient Egyptian religion. It is indeed still an open question whether demons really existed in ancient Egypt, since the ancient Egyptian language lacks a proper generic term that may be properly translated with the English “demon.” A few scholars prefer to speak of “minor deities” or “genii,” considering the demonic as belonging to the same ontological category of the divine. Kousoulis explores these and other issues in the interpretation of the demonic within the religious studies of the ancient world, with particular attention to the multifaceted concept of daimon/daimones in ancient Greece. His main point, with which the reviewer fully agrees, is that in order to discuss demons in ancient Egypt we should not look for a homogeneous “identity” for each single demon, but rather focus on their complex and ambivalent function according to their context of appearance (apotropaic, ritual, funerary, etc.) and role (benevolent or malevolent) in magical rituals.

Such a methodological approach is generally employed also by the other contributors to the volume, beginning with R. Ritner and his essay on one of the most popular demonic gangs occurring in magical and ritual texts from the Old Kingdom to the Greco-Roman period, namely the xA(y)ty.w or “slaughterers.” Ritner begins with a philologically based analysis of the collective name of these demons, which he sees as originating from the root xAwt (Demotic xyv, Coptic soeit). This term, first encountered in the literary work of The Voyage of Wenamon (dating to the eleventh or tenth century BCE), seems to describe a sort of divine ecstasy or possession. Ritner speaks of a probable later “folk-etymology” between this term and the demons’ name, which is fascinating, although not completely convincing, since it loads the demonic epithet with a semantic value (that of ecstasy, fury) that belongs more to the sphere of the gods and cannot be intrinsic in the demons’ name, which moreover is of much older origin. Ritner actually also states that, from the Eighteenth Dynasty onward, these demons are no longer distinguishable from the gods, although the only example that he can bring to support this theory is the magical P. Leiden I 346, where 12 xA(y)tyw-demons are mentioned beside a vignette showing instead proper deities such as Khnum and Sekhmet. However, such a vignette may also be a representation of the gods who control the demons mentioned in the text and not the demons themselves. Perhaps instead, for an etymological attempt to explain the origin of the demonic epithet xA(y)tyw, we should refer to the ancient Egyptian concept of xAyt or HAyt...