© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004390751_019 chapter 18 Figurines, Images, and Representations Used in Ritual Practices Andrew Wilburn In the early 1970’s, the Musée du Louvre purchased a small, unbaked mud figurine, a clay vessel, and a lead tablet that was said to be from Egypt (Illustration 18.1).1 The object depicts a woman on her knees, with her arms and hands twisted behind her back. Thirteen iron pins pierce the clay figu- rine at significant points in its anatomy—the scalp, the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the chest or heart, the pudenda, the soles of the feet, the hands and the anus. The tablet that accompanied the figurine records a complicated spell to force a woman named Ptolemais to love Sarapammon. The publication of this remarkable object by P. du Bourget, conservator of the Départment des Antiquités égyptiennes, soon followed in 1975; the inscription on the tablet was published the following year by S. Kambitsis.2 This figurine was modeled with attention to specific anatomical and portrait- like features, including hairstyle and jewelry. Scholarly interest and debate has raged over the object because of its similarity to a set of spell instructions pre- served in the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris, (P. Bib. Nat. Supp. gr. no. 574 = PGM IV 296–466), a text dated to the fourth or fifth century ce.3 Ancient ritual 1  I would like to thank my research students at Oberlin College, including Gabriel Baker (’07), Ploy Keener (’08), Christopher Motz (’08), and Eush Tayco (’08) for their assistance in prepar- ing this manuscript. Two colleagues, Andaleeb Banta, Curator of Western Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, and Matthew Rarey, Assistant Professor of Art History, provided guidance as I thought about the role and function of representation in art. I am indebted to the editors, David Frankfurter and Henk Versnel, for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I also wish to recognize the Thomas F. Cooper Fund for Classics Faculty Research at Oberlin College, which provided extensive support for acquiring the images that illustrate this essay. 2  P. du Bourguet, “Ensemble Magique De La Période Romaine En Égypte,” Revue du Louvre, 25 (1975): 255–57; S. Kambitsis, “Une nouvelle tablette magique d’égypte, Musée du Louvre inv. E27145, 3e/4e Siècle,” BIFAO 76 (1976): 213–23. 3  J.J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York: Routledge, 1990), 93–98; R.K. Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1993), 112–113; C.A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic (Cambrdige, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), esp. ch. 2, M.W. Dickie, “Who Practiced Love-Magic in Classical Antiquity and in the Late 446-496_Frankfurter_18-Wilburn.indd 446 05/11/2018 15:56:44