Aramaic Magic Bowls in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin: Descriptive List and Edition of Selected Texts

The collection of Aramaic magic bowls and related objects in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin is one of the most important in the world. This book presents a description of each object and its contents, including details of users and other names, biblical quotations, parallel texts, and linguistic features. Combined with the detailed indices, the present volume makes the Berlin collection accessible for further research. Furthermore, sixteen texts, which are representative of the whole collection, are edited. This book results from an impressive collaboration between Siam Bhayro, James Nathan Ford, Dan Levene, and Ortal-Paz Saar, with further contributions by Matthew Morgenstern, Marco Moriggi, and Naama Vilozny, and will be of interest for all those engaged in the study of these fascinating objects.

＂The presentation, transcriptions, translations, and commentaries are excellent examples of the finest scholarship from some of the leading scholars in the study of ancient Aramaic and its dialects.... The manuscript and the bowls it introduces should be eagerly received and examined by graduate students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible, esoteric traditions of later antiquity (like the seals of Solomon, demonology, etc.), and the historical development of Aramaic.＂ - Peter T. Lanfer, Occidental College, in: Review of Biblical Literature 8 (2019)

Siam Bhayro (PhD 2000, University College London) is Associate Professor in Early Jewish Studies at the University of Exeter. His research interests include the Bible, Semitic languages, medicine in the Christian and Islamic orient, and Jewish magic.
James Nathan Ford (PhD 2003, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is Associate Professor in Semitic Languages at Bar-Ilan University. His research interests include Semitic philology, and ancient near eastern and Jewish magic. He received the American Oriental Society’s Jonas C. Greenfield Prize for Younger Semitists in 2000.
Dan Levene (PhD 2000, University College London) is Professor of Semitics and the History of Religion at the University of Southampton. His research interests include Semitic languages, popular belief systems in Ethiopia, and Jewish magic.
Ortal-Paz Saar (PhD 2009, Tel Aviv University) is a cultural historian researching Judaism and its contacts with other religious traditions. Her publications focus on ancient and medieval Jewish magic, and she currently researches Jewish diasporic identity at Utrecht University.