Any work on the Greek and Demotic magical papyri must contend with or skirt around the mire of the history of the texts’ creation. Questions of influence, cultural syncretism, intended audience and background are all-important if we are to understand these texts, but such questions are incredibly difficult to answer. These issues are well highlighted in this volume, which has developed from a conference held 12–13 September 2014 in Heidelberg’s Internationales Wissenschaftsforum.

Scholarship on ancient magic has proliferated over the past 70 years and a theme which reappears throughout the volume is that much of our understanding of the Greek Magical Papyri has been shaped, one could almost say warped, by the nature of their publication in the early twentieth century by Karl Preisendanz. This is particularly emphasized in Richard Gordon’s contribution, which discusses the decisions behind the creation of Preisendanz’s edition and their resulting impact on our understanding of the magical papyri as manuscripts. This understanding is likely to be revolutionized by their republication under the aegis of the University of Chicago Magical Knowledge Project, directed by Christopher A. Faraone and Sofía Torallas Tovar. While this might not, then, be the most opportune time to publish a collection of essays on the papyri, I do feel that, nonetheless, the volume is likely to retain its usefulness. It comprises 13 chapters across three main parts. Rather than a comprehensive chapter-by-chapter review, I will provide an overview of these three parts while casting a spotlight on points of particular interest, especially in the context of current scholarship.

The highpoint of Part One is William Furley’s in-depth analysis of The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic, and Mystery in Ancient Selinous (Oxford 2013), edited by Faraone and Dirk Obbink. He issues a comprehensive challenge to its focus on the hexameters’ Hellenic contexts and presents a convincing reinterpretation of them, alongside a newly revised text and a prose translation.

Daniel Schwemer challenges the notion that mere similarities between different magical rituals are sufficient to indicate cultural borrowing. He presents a useful framework for determining whether such similarities are the products of borrowing or of independent developments. Alongside this model is an interesting discussion that improves on previous analyses of the voces magicae (untranslatable magical words and phrases written in the Greek script), including the work of William M. Brashear. This theme is picked up again later with Joachim Quack’s review of the current state of the understanding of these words, which calls for the application of greater Egyptological expertise in their interpretation.

Part Two provides close readings of ancient magical texts. Gordon’s contribution is of particular interest for those who recognize the limitations of Preisendanz’s and others’ editions. Some of the issues of working with the texts in the form in which they are currently published are picked up again (this time the focus is on H.D. Betz) by Svenja Nagel, who demonstrates that a series of lychnomancy recipes has been misleadingly subdivided.

Christopher Faraone offers an important discussion of the definition of ‘cultural plurality’. A focus on the recipes for the creation of domestic statues shows that the limited signs of cultural plurality displayed would not have been expressed in the final product. This realization raises, once again, the question of who the intended audiences of these magical handbooks were. Faraone concludes that they were priests and other Egyptians; in some instances, therefore, there was a recasting of non-Egyptian magic in a form that they could appreciate and understand.

The two chapters of Part Three address broader historical questions. Gideon Bohak and Alessia Bellusci present a new Cairo Genizah fragment found in the National Library of Israel, Jerusalem. This helps in the further reconstruction of the Greek Prayer to Helios, but also brings into focus the issues of transliteration and the inevitability of textual corruption.

The variety of the contributions entails a lack of cohesiveness. As highlighted, a definition of ‘cultural plurality’ is not offered until Faraone’s contribution at Chapter 7. In many ways, the diverse nature of the volume reflects the very nature of the magical handbooks under study: one can dip in and pull out nuggets of interest without having to plough through the work as a whole. The indices provided understand this and facilitate navigation. Many of the contributions are extremely interesting in their own right and will provide exciting insights to scholars from diverse fields.