{"id":10224,"date":"2025-08-05T00:48:40","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T00:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/?p=10224"},"modified":"2025-08-05T00:48:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T00:48:40","slug":"curses-chariots-and-the-underworld-the-magica-levantina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/curses-chariots-and-the-underworld-the-magica-levantina\/","title":{"rendered":"Curses, chariots, and the underworld: The &#8220;Magica Levantina&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_10225\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 190px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-10225\" src=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-190x300.jpg\" alt=\"Cover of the &quot;Magica Levantina&quot;\" width=\"190\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-190x300.jpg 190w, https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-649x1024.jpg 649w, https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-768x1211.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-974x1536.jpg 974w, https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-1298x2048.jpg 1298w, https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-375x591.jpg 375w, https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-750x1183.jpg 750w, https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-1140x1798.jpg 1140w, https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2025\/08\/Magica-scaled.jpg 1623w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 190px) 100vw, 190px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cover of the &#8220;Magica Levantina&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>In April 2025, Hellenic Studies Chair <a href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/people\/alexander-hollmann\/\">Alexander Hollmann<\/a> published the book, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brill.com\/edcollbook\/title\/72161\">Magica Levantina<\/a>,&#8221; a collection of magical texts in late-antique Greek from Caesarea and Antioch. The texts, mainly curses against rival charioteers and horses in the hippodrome and against rival business-owners and legal opponents, draw on a mix of pagan Greek, Egyptian, and Near Eastern underworld gods and Jewish angel names. Co-authored with Robert Daniel of the University of Cologne, this is Hollmann&#8217;s second book after 2011&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/chs.harvard.edu\/book\/hollmann-alexander-the-master-of-signs\/\">The Master of Signs: Signs and the Interpretation of Signs in Herodotus&#8217; Histories<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In April 2025, Hellenic Studies Chair Alexander Hollmann published the book, &#8220;Magica Levantina,&#8221; a collection of magical texts in late-antique Greek from Caesarea and Antioch. The texts, mainly curses against rival charioteers and horses in the hippodrome and against rival business-owners and legal opponents, draw on a mix of pagan Greek, Egyptian, and Near Eastern<\/p>\n<div><a class=\"more\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/curses-chariots-and-the-underworld-the-magica-levantina\/\">Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":710,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Curses, chariots, and the underworld: The &quot;Magica Levantina&quot; - Center for European Studies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/euwesteurope\/curses-chariots-and-the-underworld-the-magica-levantina\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Curses, chariots, and the underworld: The &quot;Magica Levantina&quot; - Center for European Studies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In April 2025, Hellenic Studies Chair Alexander Hollmann published the book, &#8220;Magica Levantina,&#8221; a collection of magical texts in late-antique Greek from Caesarea and Antioch. 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