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Paper short abstract:

Some of the spells of the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri prescribe specific clothes to be worn during the ritual, which I argue constitute a material support for the ritualist's claimed identity and authority as an Egyptian priest, and help mediating the perceived presence of divine agency.

Paper long abstract:

In her most recent book, Clothes and Monasticism in Ancient Christian Egypt (2021), Ingvild Sælid Gilhus highlights the role of clothes as “mediators between the wearers and the world” and shows how clothing participates in constructing the monastic world and molding monastic minds and memories. In the present paper, I will apply the focus on clothing to the so-called Greek Magical Papyri, to show how specific clothes prescribed in certain spells construct the identity and authority of the ritualist as a high-ranking Egyptian priest. In recent decades there has been an increasing awareness that many of the magical papyri, which provide formulas for anything between erotic spells of attraction to direct visions of divine powers, are connected to the Egyptian temple environment, and the prescribed clothes strengthen this link. The priestly clothes, I argue, are a component of a heightened and contained semiotic system, and in the ritual they serve to focus the ritualist’s attention toward invisible others, and thereby help shape the bodily experience of spirit and presence. As such, they are dynamic mediators, making the distant gods and spirits real in the minds of the ritualists. If the actual wearing of specific clothes constitute a “technique,” in the sense of clothes being a material support, they are very much part of the discursive technology of claiming a specific identity, and hence, authority.