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A Babylonian Jewish Aramaic Magical Booklet from the Damascus Genizah 33*

Folio 6a

1 and place an oath upon you, 97 that you ‫וקיימית עליכון דתיפתחון‬
F69 ‫ליבי דילי אנא‬

will open my heart, me ‫פ ב' פ ותחכמון לאוריתא‬
‫ותפקון טפשות‬
2 NN, and you will make (it) wise for
Torah, and you will remove the ‫ליביה מן ליבא דילי אנא‬
foolishness [‫פ'ב'פ' ותחמון ותפ]תחון‬

3 of the 98 heart from the heart of me, I, ‫את ליבי דילי אנא פ ב פ כלב‬
79F ‫מיטטרון וכל ֿב‬

NN, and you will see/make seen99 and ‫משה בר עמרם ולמדני ששה‬
F89 [‫טורים של ֿת ֿל]מוד‬

open ‫ ואירוץ בהון‬101‫בשם שנים‬
F10
4 my heart , I, NN, like the heart of ‫כצבי שהוא ֿר ֿץ‬
Metatron and like the heart of ‫במדבר וטרו במעי כל מה‬
‫דאילוף ומא דאילוף‬
5 Moses son of Amram, and teach me
the six columns of the Tal[mud]9F100 ‫מן יומא דנן ולעלם ולמדני‬
‫דברי תורה וחכמה‬
6 in six(?) years, and I will run in them

like a deer that runs102
10F

7 in the desert and guard in my belly all
that I learn, and what I learn

8 from this day and forever, and teach
me words of Torah and wisdom,

97 This is a common formula in the bowls, e.g.: ‫ואסרית ואשבעית ואחרימית וגזרית וקיימית‬
‫ עליכון‬in an unpublished bowl (SAD 31) brought to our attention by Dan Levene.

98 Lit.: his.

99 If the text is not corrupt (lege: ‫ותחכמון‬, as in the previous line?), then we have here a
rare example of the root ‫ חמ"י‬used in a Babylonian text. This spell is in general very
conservative in its language.

100 This expression apparently refers to the six orders of classical rabbinic literature,
though the use of ‫טורים‬, “columns,” in this context is unusual.

101 Lege: ‫בשש שנים‬.

102 The use of the correlative pronoun with participle is regarded as characteristic of the
Palestinian transmission of rabbinic Hebrew. See M. Bar-Asher, “Mishnaic Hebrew:
An Introductory Survey,” Hebrew Studies 40 (1999): 115–51, at 132.