Details
The volume edits two copies of the Mandaean scroll, ³Shapta d-Pishra d-Ainia from the Drower collection of the Mandaean manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Lady Ethel Drower published in 1937-38 a transliteration and translation of DC21, which was copied for her from a text written in 1853. The second scroll of DC 29, dated to 1910, is published here for the first time. Michael Tarelko (Minsk, Belarus) presents a fresh insight into the Mandaeans and their magical literature. ³Shapta d-Pishra d-Ainia consists of sixteen incantations against the Evil Eye. Many show a rich miscellany of Akkadian and Jewish influences, reflecting the eclectic popular religious beliefs of the Mandaeans in Late Antiquity. The new interpretation of this text casts light onto Mandaean religious literature, including Ginza Rba. This improved translation of ³Shapta d-Pishra d-Ainia is accompanied by transliterations of the texts, glossaries of Mandaic (including a dictionary of the later vocabulary used in the colophons) and parallel words in Biblical Aramaic, Syriac and Jewish Aramaic dialects. New words and terminology update R. Macuch and E. Drower, A Mandaic Dictionary (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1962), and there is a useful Corrigenda of quotations of DC 21.