Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)
ATTILA MÁRTON FARKAS: A Magical Plaque from Budapest
well-known execration statuettes, but clay tablets with the imprinted image of a bound prisoner and they were used in so called "state magic" against Egypt's foes.' 7 If these clay plaques from the Middle Kingdom have a real relationship with the late limestone relics, we can also say, that the "magical plaque" as a special instrument of magic in the course of time had been adopted into the realm of private sorcery. We can also draw a comparison between the limestone pieces and the bronze plaques pierced by nails which are known from Nubia. The latter are from Hellenistic Meroe in the Later Period (U.c. B.C.-II. c. A.D.) and they were fixed beneath temple flag staffs. These pierced bronze objects, like ancient Egyptian execration figurines, are inscribed by the magicians' with individual and nation's names. It is most likely that the Nubian sorcery drew on the Egyptian pattern and this late practice originated from an old Egyptian prototype. 18 How could Egyptians use these objects in their concrete magical practice? If these objects were amulets or the magical instruments of another kind used in execration rituals, perhaps the magicians (or the owner in general) buried these objects, like the "defixiones", in tombs. Namely this act as a "ritual killing" of the image, besides breaking and burning, was a very important execration form or an important magical technique in the so called "state magic" as well as in private sorcery in ancient Egypt. 19 This ritual act derives power from the funerary function or cemetery burial procedure and it produced an association with death. 20 The defixiones and the magical plaques, like other instruments of magic, used the power of deity. In this respect, we can say, that these relics ironically might be considered as "negative parallels" of the votive stelae. Both religious or magical instruments have the same form and both had the same function or same "system": the use of divine power, but these usages were for two opposite purposes and results. Attila Márton Farkas Eötvös Lóránd University Budapest " Sec G. Posener, Les empreintes magiques de Gizeh et les morts dangereux, MDAIK 16 (1958), pp. 252-70. '* T. Kendall, Kush: Lost Kingdom of the Nile, Brockton, MA. 1982, pp. 55-56 and Ritner, op. cit. (note I), p. 135. " See Ritner, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 172-180. : " Otherwise, the above mentioned Middle Kingdom clay plaques from Giza were incinerated before being inscribed. Posencr, op. cit. (note 15), p. 255. and Ritner, op. cit. (note I), p. 158.
