The Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale in Rome houses a small but interesting collection of incantation bowls. This group of specimens was purchased in the antiques market in Teheran (Iran) by the former IsMEO in 1970. The collection is made up of ten specimens, numbered from 5202 to 5210, while the large elephant-bowl in Jewish-Aramaic has no classification number. For a relatively small number of items, the collection comprises specimens of all kinds of incantation bowls. It counts five Mandaic, two Pahlavi, one Syriac, one Jewish-Aramaic bowl and one bowl in a pseudo-script. Due to the bad state of preservation of some of the items, only three Mandaic bowls, one Jewish Aramaic bowl and one Syriac bowl are presented in the article. All texts were collated with analogous contemporary evidence, and they provided important data from the point of view of both linguistic and cultural studies, especially as regards Iranian-Mesopotamian syncretism in the Sasanian period.
Il Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale a Roma ospita una piccola ma importante collezione di coppe magiche mesopotamiche. Questo gruppo di oggetti è stato acquistato sul mercato antiquario a Teheran (Iran), dall’allora IsMEO (oggi IsIAO) nel 1970. La collezione comprende dieci coppe magiche con testi iscritti in aramaico mandaico (5); pahlavi (2); aramaico siriaco (1), aramaico giudaico babilonese (1), pseudo-scrittura (1). A causa del cattivo stato di conservazione di alcuni esemplari, è stato possibile presentare soltanto l’analisi del testo di tre coppe mandaiche, una coppa aramaico-giudaica e una coppa siriaca. Tutti i testi sono stati collazionati con analoghe testimonianze coeve e hanno fornito dati importanti tanto dal punto di vista linguistico quanto da quello storico-culturale, in special modo per quanto concerne il sincretismo iranico-mesopotamico in età sasanide.
Aramean Demons in Rome. Incantation Bowls in the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale
MORIGGI, MARCO
2001-01-01
Abstract
The Museo Nazionale d’Arte Orientale in Rome houses a small but interesting collection of incantation bowls. This group of specimens was purchased in the antiques market in Teheran (Iran) by the former IsMEO in 1970. The collection is made up of ten specimens, numbered from 5202 to 5210, while the large elephant-bowl in Jewish-Aramaic has no classification number. For a relatively small number of items, the collection comprises specimens of all kinds of incantation bowls. It counts five Mandaic, two Pahlavi, one Syriac, one Jewish-Aramaic bowl and one bowl in a pseudo-script. Due to the bad state of preservation of some of the items, only three Mandaic bowls, one Jewish Aramaic bowl and one Syriac bowl are presented in the article. All texts were collated with analogous contemporary evidence, and they provided important data from the point of view of both linguistic and cultural studies, especially as regards Iranian-Mesopotamian syncretism in the Sasanian period.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.