A Jewish Aramaic Amulet on Papyrus (Strasbourg, Papyrus hébreu 2)

This article presents the editio princeps of an unpublished magical artifact,which appears to be the first known Aramaic amulet written on papyrus.The amulet was produced for a male client seeking protection against“fever and shivering”. Despite its poor state of preservation and its conventional contents, the amulet provides a valuable contribution to ourunder standing of Jewish magic in late antiquity. It highlights the vast gap between the limited data emerging from the archaeological record,typically dependent on the durability of some materials, and the a ctualdiverse nature of Jewish magical praxis, as evidenced by the practitioners’manuals and by external testimonies. Several aspects of the new amuletare discussed: its uniqueness within the Jewish magical corpus, its presumed origins in the Strasbourg library’s collection of Egyptian papyrirather than the Cairo Genizah fragments, its physical condition, and its contents. The edition also includes a high-quality image, a hand-drawnfacsimile, linguistic notes, and references to parallel sources.