Amulets of Protection and Texts for Fears in Antiquity

Amulets are devices for fear management and communication with supernatural forces. Textual amulets - that is, amulets which contain mostly texts - attest explicitly to human fears, or threats which were supposed to be repelled by the amulets. They are valuable sources which can be analyzed for the study of the history of religion, historical anthropology, and interreligious research. The contributions in this current volume are based on the research project "Between Materiality and Scribal Magic: West-Semitic Textual Amulets from the First Millennium BCE to the Rise of Islam". Within this project, teams from Leipzig University and Tel Aviv University studied textual amulets from the Levant in the 1st mill. BCE and CE that were written in the West-Semitic languages. Several scholars were invited to discuss and share their expertise within the scope of this research project. The present volume is the result of this interdisciplinary and international cooperation.

Auteur
is Professor for "History and Religion of Israel and its Environment" at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Leipzig, an Extraordinary Professor for Ancient Studies at the University of Stellenbosch/South Africa, a Visiting Full Professor for Biblical Archaeology at Bar Ilan University/Israel, and a Full Member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences. Born 1961; studied Jewish History, Classical Studies and Religion at the Hebrew University Jerusalem, and Princeton University; 1994 PhD; Professor at the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud, Tel Aviv University.