Making Amulets Christian

This book examines Greek amulets with Christian elements from late antique Egypt in order to discern the processes whereby a customary practice—the writing of incantations on amulets—changed in an increasingly Christian context. It addresses three questions. First, how did the formulation of incantations and amulets change as the Christian church became the prevailing religious institution in Egypt in the last centuries of the Roman Empire? Second, what can we learn from incantations and amulets containing Christian elements about the cultural and social location of the people who wrote them? Finally, how were incantations and amulets indebted to the rituals or ritualizing behaviour of Christians? The book analyses amulets according to types of amulets and the ways in which they incorporate Christian elements. By comparing the formulation and writing of individual amulets that are similar to one another, one can observe differences in the culture of the scribes of these materials. The book argues for ‘conditioned individuality’ in the production of amulets. On the one hand, amulets manifest qualities that reflect the training and culture of the individual writer. On the other hand, amulets reveal that individual writers were shaped, whether consciously or inadvertently, by the resources they drew upon—by what is called ‘tradition’ in the field of religious studies.