Studien zur spätägyptischen Religion

Herausgegeben von Christian Leitz

Band 29

2020
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden
 Marina Escolano-Poveda

The Egyptian Priests

of the Graeco-Roman Period
An Analysis on the Basis of the Egyptian
and Graeco-Roman Literary and Paraliterary Sources

2020
Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden
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Table of Contents

PREFACE......................................................................................................................................... XI

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................................... 1
1. History of research .................................................................................................................. 2
2. The plan of this book .............................................................................................................. 8

PART ONE ....................................................................................................................................... 11

CHAPTER 2: DEMOTIC NARRATIVES ...................................................................................... 13
1. The Inaros-Pedubastis cycle ................................................................................................... 14
1.1. The Fight for the Sinecure of Amun ................................................................................ 15
1.1.1. The young priest of Horus of Pe in Buto ............................................................... 15
1.1.2. The First Prophet of Amun .................................................................................... 22
1.1.3. Other priests........................................................................................................... 22
1.2. The Fight for the Armor of Inaros ................................................................................... 23
1.2.1. The scribe of the divine book ................................................................................ 24
1.2.2. The scribe of the House of Life ............................................................................. 25
2. The Story of Peteisis ............................................................................................................... 27
2.1. Frame story ...................................................................................................................... 28
2.1.1. Peteisis ................................................................................................................... 28
2.1.2. Hareus .................................................................................................................... 39
2.1.3. Other priests........................................................................................................... 39
2.2. Short stories ..................................................................................................................... 40
3. The Instruction of Ankhsheshonqy .......................................................................................... 44
3.1. Ankhsheshonqy ............................................................................................................... 45
3.2. Harsiesis .......................................................................................................................... 46
3.3. Other priests .................................................................................................................... 47
4. The Setne cycle ....................................................................................................................... 48
4.1. Setne ................................................................................................................................ 49
4.2. Naneferkaptah ................................................................................................................. 55
4.3. The old priest ................................................................................................................... 59
4.4. Si-Osiris ........................................................................................................................... 61
4.5. Horus son of Paneshe ...................................................................................................... 67
4.6. Other priests .................................................................................................................... 70
5. Papyrus Vandier ...................................................................................................................... 71
5.1. Merire .............................................................................................................................. 72
5.2. The court magicians ........................................................................................................ 74
6. Amasis and the skipper ........................................................................................................... 75
7. The magician Hi (son of) Hor ................................................................................................. 75
8. The Saqqara Demotic Papyri .................................................................................................. 76
9. The story of Padipep ............................................................................................................... 77
10. Eine neue demotische Erzählung .......................................................................................... 79
11. Narratives from the Tebtunis Temple Library ...................................................................... 80
12. The Life of Imhotep ............................................................................................................... 82
VIII Table of Contents

CHAPTER 3: GRAECO-EGYPTIAN LITERATURE.................................................................... 85

1. The Greek Alexander Romance: Nectanebo ........................................................................... 85
2. Manetho and Chaeremon (with a postscript on Horapollo) .................................................... 91
2.1. Manetho ........................................................................................................................... 92
2.2. Chaeremon ....................................................................................................................... 105
2.3. Postscript: Horapollo and the transmission of Chaeremon’s Hieroglyphika .................. 113
3. The Hermetica ......................................................................................................................... 115
3.1. The Hermetica: texts, chronology, and history of research ............................................. 116
3.2 The technical Hermetica ................................................................................................... 124
3.2.1. The Graeco-Egyptian magical formularies ............................................................ 127
3.2.2. The early alchemical texts ..................................................................................... 132
3.2.2.1. Pseudo-Demokritos’ Physika kai mystika ................................................ 137
3.2.2.2. Zosimos of Panopolis ............................................................................... 140
3.3. The philosophical Hermetica ........................................................................................... 147
3.4. Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 156
CHAPTER 4: GRAECO-ROMAN LITERATURE ......................................................................... 159
1. The ancient novel .................................................................................................................... 159
1.1. The Aithiopika of Heliodoros .......................................................................................... 161
1.1.1 Kalasiris .................................................................................................................. 163
2. Lucian’s Philopseudes ............................................................................................................ 180
2.1. Pankrates .......................................................................................................................... 181
3. Apuleius’ Metamorphoses ...................................................................................................... 185
3.1. Zatchlas ............................................................................................................................ 187
3.2. Priests in Book 11 (the Isis Book) ................................................................................... 194
3.2.1. The priest of Cenchreae, the high priest Mithras,
and the pastophorus Asinius Marcellus................................................................. 195
3.2.2. The priests of the procession and other priestly figures in Book 11...................... 200
4. Thessalos ................................................................................................................................. 204
5. Harnuphis and the “miraculous rain” ...................................................................................... 212
6. Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride ................................................................................................. 215
6.1. The Egyptian priests according to Plutarch ..................................................................... 219
7. Iamblichos’ De mysteriis (and Porphyry’s Epistula ad Anebonem) ....................................... 225
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS TO CHAPTERS 2–4 .................................................................... 237
1. Egyptian priests in Demotic narratives ................................................................................... 237
1.1. Characteristics of the Egyptian priesthood in Demotic literature.................................... 238
1.1.1. Physical characteristics .......................................................................................... 238
1.1.2. Age ......................................................................................................................... 239
1.1.3. Social situation....................................................................................................... 240
1.1.4. Name ...................................................................................................................... 241
1.1.5. Epithets and titles ................................................................................................... 242
1.1.6. Actions: ritual, magical .......................................................................................... 245
1.1.7. Moral characterization ........................................................................................... 247
1.2. Other important aspects in the Demotic narratives ......................................................... 248
1.2.1. Wisdom and knowledge......................................................................................... 248
1.2.2. Priests being paid for their services ....................................................................... 250
2. Egyptian priests in Graeco-Egyptian and Graeco-Roman literature ....................................... 251
2.1. Characteristics of the Egyptian priesthood in Graeco-Egyptian
and Graeco-Roman literature .......................................................................................... 252
2.1.1. Physical characteristics .......................................................................................... 252
2.1.2. Age ......................................................................................................................... 253
 Table of Contents IX

2.1.3. Social situation ..................................................................................................... 254

2.1.4. Name .................................................................................................................... 256
2.1.5. Epithets and titles.................................................................................................. 256
2.1.6. Actions: ritual, magical......................................................................................... 257
2.1.7. Moral characterization .......................................................................................... 258
2.2. Other important aspects in the narratives ....................................................................... 259
2.2.1. Wisdom and knowledge ....................................................................................... 259
2.2.2. Priests being paid for their services ...................................................................... 260
3. Contrast with Dieleman’s conclusions in chapter 6 of Priests, Tongues, and Rites .............. 261
3.1. Demotic literature ........................................................................................................... 261
3.2. Graeco-Roman literature ................................................................................................ 264
3.3. Comparison between Demotic and Graeco-Roman literature ........................................ 267
4. Conclusion: is there a literary type?....................................................................................... 269

PART TWO..................................................................................................................................... 281

CHAPTER 6: ROMAN OPPRESSION AND DECAY OF THE TEMPLES?............................... 283
1. Traditional views on the impact of Rome in the Egyptian temple milieu .............................. 283
2. New interpretations ................................................................................................................ 285
3. Persistence of the traditional model ....................................................................................... 292
4. Conclusions............................................................................................................................ 294
CHAPTER 7: THE “PRIEST TO MAGICIAN” MODEL ............................................................. 295
1. The “priest to magician” model ............................................................................................. 295
2. Analysis and refutation of the “priest to magician” model .................................................... 298
2.1. Decentralization of the cult ............................................................................................ 298
2.2. The adaptation of temple ritual to private use ................................................................ 301
2.3. Mercantilization of religious expertise ........................................................................... 304
2.4. Itinerant experts in the Roman Empire ........................................................................... 305
3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 310
CHAPTER 8: THE “STEREOTYPE APPROPRIATION” MODEL ............................................. 311
1. Analysis and refutation of the “stereotype appropriation” model .......................................... 312
1.1. Exoticism and the image of the magos ........................................................................... 312
1.2. Egyptian and Graeco-Roman literary sources in the creation of the stereotype ............. 315
1.3. The Graeco-Egyptian magical formularies as a document
of “stereotype appropriation” ......................................................................................... 317
2. Reception and use of the “stereotype appropriation” model in the scholarly literature ......... 319
3. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 325

CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 327

1. So, what is an Egyptian priest? .............................................................................................. 329
2. Postscript ............................................................................................................................... 338

BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................... 341

INDEX ............................................................................................................................................ 377

PREFACE

This book is a revised and expanded version of my Ph.D. dissertation, successfully defended
on the 6th of October of 2017 at the Johns Hopkins University. It has been written, reviewed,
and complemented in three different continents and five countries: the United States, Egypt,
Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany. It sees now its completion within unprecedented
circumstances, as I write these words in a deserted Liverpool during the quarantine of the 2020
global pandemic. Despite my present social isolation, in the previous years and in all these
places I have encountered many wonderful people to whom I am greatly indebted for making
this research adventure possible, bearable, and, more importantly, enjoyable.

In the process of researching and writing the original dissertation I was very fortunate to
benefit from the guidance of a number of excellent scholars. First and foremost, I would like
to thank my advisor and mentor, Richard Jasnow, who has been my Virgil over the past years
through the fascinating but overwhelming world of Egyptology, and who patiently taught me
my first Demotic signs. I have not only been able to learn from him during my classes at
Hopkins, but also through the example of his savoir faire as a scholar. His research has always
been a model to which I aspired, and he was the reason that brought me to Johns Hopkins in
the first place. I feel honored to have been able to have his assistance during my own first steps
in the world of papyri editing, and in the process of becoming a researcher myself.
I am equally indebted to Betsy Bryan. From the first time I stepped into one of her classes,
to all the days we have shared under the Egyptian sun trying to unveil the secrets of the temple
of Mut, I have been fascinated by her keen eye and sharp intelligence that allow her to see
beyond what most of us are able to when observing the representations carved or painted on
the walls of the Egyptian monuments. She has always encouraged me to be an original thinker,
to read critically, to organize my thoughts logically, and to come up with new interpretations.
She has also trusted my work as an artist, and given me the chance to accompany her in eight
wonderful archaeological seasons in Egypt. I had always heard that a good Egyptologist needs
to have a good training in both philology and the study of Egyptian art and archaeology, and I
could never have dreamt of having two better professors to lead me through both paths.
As a scholar of Graeco-Roman Egypt, my research has one foot in the field of Egyptology,
and the other in that of Classics. I want to wholeheartedly thank Silvia Montiglio for
encouraging me to take part in her Greek literature seminars even after I was done with
coursework, and thus learn from her expertise in the analysis of the nuances of the Greek
language. This allowed me to become familiar with less widely studied Graeco-Roman textual
corpora, such as the Greek novel, which have been crucial to my research.
I am also extremely grateful to Paul Delnero, whose classes of Mesopotamian history not
only provided me with a global view of the context of the ancient Near East, but also stimulated
my critical thinking and analysis of primary sources and modern theoretical models. During
my years at Hopkins he has always been a very supportive presence, displaying sincere interest
in my work on Graeco-Roman Egypt and ancient science.
XII Preface

Last but certainly not least, at Johns Hopkins, I want to thank Lawrence Principe. Although
I did not have the chance to attend his classes during my time at Hopkins, I was fortunate
enough to be able to sit in during the symposium on the sources of alchemy that he organized
in May of 2014. It was through this symposium and the reading of his monograph The Secrets
of Alchemy (2013) that I decided to include the early alchemical sources as part of my
dissertation research. His encouragement of my work in this area has led me to its development
into one of my current main research topics, and has allowed me to meet wonderful scholars
of the history of alchemy, such as Matteo Martelli and Miriam Blanco Cesteros from the ERC
project AlchemEast at the University of Bologna, who have been exceedingly supportive of
my research as well.
My time at Hopkins would not have been the same without the caring and friendly
environment of the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Glenda Hogan and Vonnie Wild have
always been there to help me navigate the treacherous waters of university administration. I
also have been extremely fortunate to have a wonderful group of colleagues and friends in the
department, among whom I want to especially thank Maggie Bryson, Katherine Davis, Rania
Galal, Lingxin Zhang, and Gaultier Mouron for always being there for me. From the
Department of Classics, Michele Asuni, a fellow Mediterranean, has always been by my side
since we met through the study of Euripides’ Bacchae.

I would also like to thank my Spanish papyrological family, and especially my papyrological
mentor, Sofía Torallas Tovar, who opened for me the doors of the papyrological collection of
the Abbey of Montserrat in the summer of 2009, and warmly welcomed me into this wonderful
group of scholars, among whom Raquel Martín, Alba de Frutos, and Mª Jesús Albarrán are
now also good friends (and many others of whom I beg forgiveness for not including their
names here). True amicitia papyrologorum.

Since the completion of my dissertation, life has taken me back to Europe, and I am currently
with one foot in the UK and another in Germany. At the University of Liverpool I have now
found my new academic home during the academic year, and I want to thank my colleagues
in the Department of Archaeology, Classics, and Egyptology for their warm welcome into the
department and their support in the adaptation to a new teaching environment. I want to
especially thank the Egyptology team, and my students during these two academic years, who
have made of my Liverpudlian experience a wonderful and rewarding time.
In the summer of 2019, I started combining my Lectureship in Egyptology at Liverpool
with a Humboldt Research Fellowship at the Institut für die Kulturen des Alten Orients
(IANES) of the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. I would like to wholeheartedly thank
my host there, Christian Leitz, for supporting and encouraging my research, as well as for
offering me the opportunity to publish this monograph in his series Studien zur
spätägyptischen Religion. A special thanks goes to Carolina Teotino for being a wonderful
guide and problem-solver, as well as a great friend.
I would also like to thank Jens Fetkenheuer and the team at Harrassowitz for making the
preparation of this manuscript for publication a very smooth and pleasant task.
 Preface XIII

A very special thanks goes to Mason Wilkes, whose enthusiastic and unconditional support
during all these years, and his sincere appreciation of my work, have been fundamental not
just for the completion of this research, but to keep me going during the toughest of times. I
could not have asked for a more thoughtful, loving, and truly funny partner.

Finally, nothing of this would have been possible without the devoted encouragement of my
parents, who despite being on the other side of the ocean or the continent, have been present
in every step of this path, even in those times in which it was also difficult for them to keep
going. My father left us exactly three months ago, and will not be here to see this book
physically come to light, but he has been with me, and still is, throughout every moment that
led to the completion of this manuscript, despite being himself in his own greatest and crudest
ordeal against an invincible enemy. You left us in a New Moon, when the other side of the
world was observing an eclipse, and I had the immense honor to lead you to join the waters of
Nun in the next Full Moon. Now you are whole, wD#.t|, and will live within us for all eternity.

Liverpool, March 25, 2020

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

“Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus”

Umberto Eco, variation on a verse by Bernard of Cluny

When the traveler walks through the dimly lit staircases that lead to the roof in the temple of
Dendera, he finds himself suddenly immersed in a part of a ritual that used to take place
between those walls around two thousand years ago1. On both sides, two processions, mostly
composed by priests, ascend and descend carrying different ritual objects. Carved in stone and
illuminated through some small windows that pierce the walls, these priests have been
performing the rituals incessantly, in a cycle with no end. The visitor can stop and delight in
the details that decorate the shrines that are being carried, in the finely carved robes, and learn
more about them by reading the hieroglyphic inscriptions that accompany the figures. The
images of the ritual are still there, but the place that the real priests occupied in the staircase is
now empty. The prophets, the divine fathers, the chief divine scribe with his tablet covered in
ritual formulae, all are long gone, but behind them they left a trail of images and texts that
attest to their presence once in the temple, in that same place where the traveler now stands.
The ancient Egyptian priests were fine crafters of images, not just visual ones, such as those
that cover the walls of the temples, but also written representations. In fact, writing was a
central aspect of the ancient Egyptian culture, and became one of the main characteristics that
defined the identity of the Egyptian priests. This was particularly the case in the Graeco-
Roman period, when access to the traditional Egyptian scripts was slowly restricted only to
the members of the priesthood2. The Egyptian priests, throughout the long history of Egypt,
were not just the keepers of the balance in the cosmos through the performance of the religious
rites in the temples, but also the intellectual class in charge of the creation, development and
preservation of the elements that characterized the Egyptian civilization. In this process of
definition, they also created images of themselves, configuring the main elements that
characterized them as a group and self-reflecting on their roles. These images took the shape
of reliefs and paintings, statues, but also of verbal depictions of priestly characters in literary
texts. It is assumed that this literary production was created in the so-called House of Life3,
which is sometimes defined by modern scholars as the temple scriptorium, where the

1 On these staircases and the festival of the New Year, cf. ELDAMATY 2003. For a summary of the basic
bibliography on the temple of Dendera, including the editions and translations of its texts, and a selection of
publications on its architecture, astronomical features, and rituals, cf. CAUVILLE and IBRAHIM ALI 2015: 311–
319. For an edition and analysis of the texts of the staircases and the kiosk on the roof of the temple of Dendera,
and their use in the ceremony of the Egyptian New Year, cf. RICKERT 2019.
2 On the secrecy of the Egyptian scripts, cf. ASSMANN 2004; On the demise of the Egyptian scripts in the Roman
period, cf. STADLER 2008.
3 For bibliography on the House of Life, cf. GARDINER 1938; MORENZ 2001; and references in JASNOW and
ZAUZICH 2005: 33–36. On scribal tradition in the House of Life of Dime (Soknopaiou Nesos), with an updated
discussion on the institution of the House of Life, cf. STADLER 2015a.
2 Chapter 1: Introduction

intellectual life of the temples took place. Unfortunately, while some of the products of the
House of Life have been preserved in the form of ritual handbooks, priestly manuals, and
narratives, not much about their circumstances of production, of the functioning of the House
of Life itself, or even of its exact character, has come down to us4. Once more, as in the case
of the staircase in Dendera, we can admire the images on the walls, but the real priests who
produced them and of whom they are a reflection still remain elusive.
The Graeco-Roman period (end of the fourth century BCE-beginning of the fourth century
CE) is particularly interesting for the study of the Egyptian priesthood, since together with the
abundance of written documentation preserved on papyrus and the possibility of studying the
architecture, decorative programs, and ritual texts of its still extant temples, these native
Egyptian images can be compared to a wealth of references in the contemporary Graeco-
Roman literature. The fascination of the Greeks and Romans with Egyptian wisdom and the
Egyptian priests as its keepers led not only to the inclusion of Egyptian priestly figures in the
Graeco-Roman literary production, but also to the philosophical discussion of the identity of
the Egyptian priesthood and their ancient knowledge. Furthermore, the direct interaction of
the Egyptian culture with that of the Greeks in the multicultural context of the Hellenistic and
then Roman worlds gave rise to an interesting hybrid culture that has been designated as
Graeco-Egyptian, for whose configuration the Egyptian priests were directly responsible5. We
see its production not only in the new artistic forms that combine Egyptian and Greek
elements6, but also in a rich literature also defined as Graeco-Egyptian, written in Greek, but
conveying an interesting intertwining of Egyptian and Greek elements into a new whole.

The present study is concerned both with the ancient images of the Egyptian priests and their
temple milieu in the Graeco-Roman period, transmitted to us by means of both Egyptian and
Graeco-Roman written sources, as well as with the modern scholarly analyses that, like the
traveler going up the staircase of Dendera, have reflected upon these images, trying to piece
together the different testimonies of native Egyptian and contemporary Graeco-Roman sources
in an attempt to visualize who were those individuals that once stood upon those steps. These
modern views, the development of which I describe in the next section, have in some cases
created models for the understanding of the situation of the ancient Egyptian priests of the
Graeco-Roman period that, despite their intent of clarifying our interpretation of the ancient
images, have actually imposed over them an extra layer of characterization that is not always
based on what the ancient sources actually say. The identification and examination of the
validity of these models will be a central point of analysis in the present monograph.

1. History of research
The study of the Egyptian priesthood in Graeco-Roman Egypt has been undertaken within
different disciplines—Egyptology, Classics, History, History of Religion, and others—, but

4 Quack has suggested that the House of Life may have been an institution independent from the temples. He
indicates that in the Book of the Temple, when personnel of the House of Life are mentioned, they seem to be
attached to the royal palace. Cf. QUACK 2002d: 171.
5 For an interesting discussion on the concept of syncretism, applied to Roman Egypt, cf. MOYER 2016.
6 Cf. RIGGS 2005; VENIT 2002; VENIT 2016; GUIMIER-SORBETS, PELLE, and SEIF EL-DIN 2015.