SPIER, Jeffrey (ed.)
Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World Catalogue

What is magic? Cursed! presents a world in which magic was not illusion or sleight of hand but a vital tool for navigating daily life. The essays in this volume reveal how individuals and communities from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome once sought to protect the vulnerable, heal the body, hex adversaries, and even influence the divine. Evidence of these practices spans more than two millennia, from representations of Egyptian rituals performed by priests, to texts used by Babylonian ritual specialists to exorcise demons, to amulets made with gems or papyrus worn by people in the Greek and Roman worlds.

Published to accompany the exhibition of the same name, Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World invites readers to see the ancient world with renewed clarity and to recognize within it the deep human desire to make sense of forces larger than ourselves. [publisher's note]

Published by Toledo Museum of Art, 2026
Exhibition Catalogues