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A Babylonian Jewish Aramaic Magical Booklet from the Damascus Genizah 13*

example of the ongoing circulation of some older Jewish Aramaic magical
spells and recipes in the Arabic-speaking Jewish communities of the
Middle Ages.

In many ways, including the small sizes and irregular shapes of the
folios, the mixture of Aramaic and Judaeo-Arabic, the aims of the
individual recipes, and most of the ritual techniques they employ, the
Damascus Genizah magical booklet looks quite similar to the earliest
parchment magical recipe books from the Cairo Genizah, with which it is
roughly contemporaneous.9 However, the Damascus booklet is distinct
from its Cairene siblings in the strong Babylonian flavor of its spells, and
perhaps also of some of its ritual instructions. This is especially apparent
when we note the numerous parallels between these spells and those found
in the Babylonian Jewish (and non-Jewish) incantation bowls, many of
which are noted in our commentary to the text. It is, of course, true that
these recipes also bear many resemblances to the Palestinian Jewish
Aramaic magical texts, as attested in late-antique metal-plate amulets and
in many Genizah magical texts, but their resemblances to the incantation
bowls are far more numerous and far more striking. Moreover, in some
cases the Babylonian elements are even more obvious, including, for
example, the appearance of Babylonian deities in 2a:10 and of the
Chaldaean priests in 4a:8. Thus, not only the folios’ provenance and
language (on which more below) but also their contents argue for their
“Eastern” origins, in or around the world of late-antique Babylonian Jewish
magic. This is a world about which we know much, but almost exclusively
from a single type of source, namely, the Babylonian incantation bowls, to
which may be added such texts as the Havdala de-Rabbi Akiba, the Pishra
de-Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, and perhaps also the Sword of Moses. Thus,
the emergence of a first clear example of a Babylonian-Jewish magical

9 See, for example, T-S K1.143, published in J. Naveh and S. Shaked, Magic Spells and
Formulae: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1993),
Geniza 18.