Some of you reading this may recall my article on Antinous and Glykon in Abraxas volume 5 from 2014. Well, like many things I’ve theorized or had insights over in relation to my devotional involvements with Antinous, it looks like I might have had some precognitions on this matter as well!
A few friends and colleagues in academia (because not all of them are as bad as some academics are or have been…!?!) let me know about this matter, and gave me permission to post about it here with a few caveats about journalistic coverage only; the actual publication of the find and the specifics of it for use in future academic discourse will be done by them, and full credit to them for literally digging these things up…all I did was have some interesting insights that turned out to be true!
My friend, Dr. Petra Schlangenstücke (Ph.D., University of Wuppertal, 2019) of the Warburg Institute, in conjunction with a team from the Anglo-Egyptian Exploration Society, the Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities at the University of Texas-Austin, and the Papyrology Collection at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, has been studying some papyrus fragments from an excavation at Tebtynis that took place over the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Six fragments of a single papyrus were found in 2022, and an additional five were found the following year, and these have been reassembled. Of course, due to material lacunae from lost pieces and wearing away of ink on the surviving papyrus fragments themselves, the full text is not available; it is hoped that further fragments might be unearthed in this year’s excavations, but enough of the text has been discerned currently that some incredibly significant conclusions can be drawn.
“What we have here is a strange tale involving the deified Antinous calling for various elements to be assembled for what appears to be a magical spell formula; the Antinous-specific details are limited to the prologue of the spell fragment as we currently have it, while other mythological figures are mentioned in the spell rubrics themselves.”
While this may seem like an interesting but nonetheless not particularly remarkable situation, the Deities mentioned in the spell and some of the ingredients called for are all things fitting what we learn of the cult of Glykon from the account provided in Lukian of Samosata’s Alexandros Pseudomanteis, “Alexander the False Prophet,” a satirical work that has been viewed variously by scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
“In our twentieth-century way, we have too often taken Lukian’s writing on these matters as a kind of investigative journalist’s exposé, as if it reveals the truth about the cult and mysteries of Glykon,” Dr. Schlangenstücke comments. “In reality, we should think of Lukian more as a tabloid story of the late twentieth century in the U.S. than a muckraker in the early twentieth century: there are elements of truth to Lukian’s critique, but overall it is more ‘muck’ than fact, and much of it was done for lurid appeal rather than an interest in exposing fraud. Lukian was a satirist, after all, more of a humorist telling a comedic story rather than someone dedicated to arriving at objective and factual truth in his writings–categories which did not exactly exist at the time, after all.”
The matter of whether it is Lukian who knew of this text or one like it, or if perhaps Alexander of Abunoteichos (or, perhaps even, his collaborator Cocconas, if indeed such an individual existed and is not the invention of Lukian) knew it more directly, is not certain at this stage, but it appears possible that one or both of the prophet and the satirist may have encountered it, or a text like it.
In particular, the relevant parts of the translation roughly reads:
“Miraculous spell for snake divination. This formula was known to the Divine Antinous, when He came from Bithynia to Egypt to hunt the [lion?] and its two companion serpents. The first serpent was trampled by the horse of the Divine Antinous, and receded into the desert; but the second became spattered with the blood of [the lion?–lacunae, about three lines missing] lotus, but the stone serpent fell into the papyrus swamp. It was this stone that allowed the Oracle of the Divine Antinous in His holy city upon the Nile to discern truth from falsehood, to provide dreams to those visiting His temple, to reveal cures for headache, distempers of the bowels, and boils of the skin, and to tell the times of birth of women wishing to conceive children after periods of barrenness. Pachrates of Heliopolis wrote down the spell, and gave the stone to [two lines missing] and the following formula had been spoken by the Divine Antinous, to take [the materials?]…
“[about ten lines missing] when it has come out of the water, and is safe upon the black mud, take the egg of an ostrich and remove the embryo, being careful not to split the shell nor crack it in half. Insert a deified [scarab] beetle into it, along with the ashes of a burnt offering of a waterfowl immolated on acacia wood, along with hyssop, myrrh, and three measures of hair from a four-footed creature still living. Sit on the ground with this egg between one’s folded legs, sealed with black mud from the papyrus swamp, and bring in a large python; if the python is trained or docile, it may be alive, but if ferocious, it is better that [it is dead?]. Wrap the python around the one seated, and let sleep come over him, and say the following: PHORBORBORA MISONKTAIK AAAEEEIIIOOOYYY BAINCHOOCH MENE MENE MENE Holy Selene, keeper of the Gates of Nyx, MARMORMARA AIX ASKI KATASKI etc., I N son of N ask the Divine Asklepios to send His son to aid me in my sleep, that I may know the cures needed on this occasion, AIM AIN AIX AIP AIR AIS AIT, IAO IAO IAOAI. The Goddess Selene will descend in a vision to the one sitting, and will offer to become his lover, and he will dream…
“[five lines missing] adorned with a leopard’s skin, and upon his head a headdress made from the sidelocks of twelve pure children at their coming-of-age, and if possible, let two or more of these be hair of flax or honey in color, as Apollon the father of Asklepios [text breaks off]…”
While the details do not match exactly, and the mantic stone is not attested elsewhere, several elements in the spell do match the cultus of Glykon as reported by Lukian quite closely.
“Perhaps we will see,” Dr. Schlangenstücke hopes, “that some further eyes on the text itself, and our proposed reconstructions and translations, may turn up more ideas and insights into the remainder of the text’s contents, and what else might have been in here. I find the collaboration of scholars in fields different from my own are often the most fruitful in approaching problems from a different angle, and yielding valuable information as a result.”
Dr. Schlangenstücke is also working on a large corpus of Greek and Graeco-Egyptian names which can be contextually classified as cases of nominative determinism. “Pachrates of Heliopolis’ name is relevant in this regard–it’s been sitting there in front of everyone for centuries, and yet no one has asked why a magician attributed with compositions related to Antinous might be named this; the Pancrates comparison, or possibly confusion, is also interesting, but let us prefer to take what is actually written rather than what clever ideas we might prefer that are more our own constructions than what can be verified.”
As more information becomes available, I will certainly let all of you know what I find out! The publication of these results is expected in the latter part of 2024, or perhaps early 2025. Stay tuned!
P. SUFENAS VIRIUS LUPUS 
Hail Glykon!
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