Magic Incantation Bowls - The BAS Library
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Magic Incantation Bowls

Charms to Curse, to Cure and to Celebrate

By Hershel Shanks

According to Dan Levene, an expert in Jewish magic incantation bowls, more than 2,000 of these fascinating vessels have survived.1 The vast majority bear inscriptions written in a dialect known as Jewish Aramaic and were produced in Jewish communities in Babylonia between the third and seventh centuries C.E. Precisely how they functioned, however, is still a mystery. These bowls are usually approximately the size of a large cereal bowl and are inscribed in cramped writing that spirals around the interior of the bowl from the center to the outside. Occasionally, they are accompanied by drawings—perhaps of the demons against […]

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Endnotes

1.

“Curse or Blessing, What’s in the Magic Bowl?” The Ian Karten Lecture 2002, University of Southampton, on which much of this article is based. This lecture is based on Professor Levene’s doctoral dissertation which in turn is based on his study of the magic incantation bowls in the collection of Shlomo Moussaieff, by whose kind permission the pictures in this article are published.

2.

“Pagan Incantations in Aramaic Incantation Bowls,” in M.J. Geller, J.C. Greenfield and M.P. Weitzman, eds., Studia Aramaica, New Sources and New Approaches (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), p. 53.