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Faculty Fellow

Christopher Faraone

Edward Olson Professor of Classics in the Department of Classics and the College University of Chicago

Biography

Christopher Faraone’s research interests focus on Ancient Greek poetry, religion and magic. His recent works include Vanishing Acts: Deletio Morbi as Speech Act and Visual Design on Ancient Greek Amulets, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 115 (London 2013) and The Getty Hexameters: Poetry, Magic and Mystery in Ancient Greek Selinous (2013), as well as his Transformation of Greek Amulets in Roman Imperial Times (2018), a project that he began as an IAS Fellow in 2008. His Hexametrical Genres from Homer to Theocritus, was published in 2021 with Oxford University Press.

To learn more about Christopher Faraone’s research and publications, see his profile page at the Department of Classics.

Featured Project

Projects

Transmission of Magical Knowledge in Antiquity: The Papyrus Magical Handbooks in Context, Part II

Transmission of Magical Knowledge in Antiquity: The Papyrus Magical Handbooks in Context, Part II

Extending a research investigation begun in 2015, this project is finalizing an edited text and translation of an important corpus of ancient magical handbooks.

The main purpose of this project is to produce a new edition and translation of the texts of the Greek, Demotic, and Coptic magical handbooks, from the second century BCE to the sixth century CE from Egypt, together with an integral study concerning the material production of these kinds of...

Transmission of Magical Knowledge in Antiquity: The Papyrus Magical Handbook

Transmission of Magical Knowledge in Antiquity: The Papyrus Magical Handbook

An effort to re-edit and re-translate a set of ancient magical handbooks from Graeco-Roman Egypt opened paths for exploring the practices by which ancient knowledge was transmitted.

Thanks to the climatological conditions and scribal practices of Graeco-Roman Egypt, a number of handbooks from that region (and from no other in the Graeco-Roman ancient world) have reached us. These handbooks are precious witnesses to practices and processes of cultural transmission: the...