Material Matters: The Hay Archive of Magical Spells on Leather

Mellon Visiting Fellow Lecture

Tags For: Material Matters: The Hay Archive of Magical Spells on Leather
  • Lecture
  • Ticket Required
Tuesday, September 23, 2025, 3:30–4:30 p.m.
Dr. Elisabeth R. O’Connell, Byzantine World Curator, The British Museum
Location:  Lecture Hall
John C. and Sally S. Morley Family Foundation Lecture Hall
Free; Ticket Required
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Magical Spells on Leather, c. 700s–800s. Egypt. Leather; h. 22.5 cm. The British Museum, P. Hay 4 (EA 10122). Photo © Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence

About The Event

The Hay archive of Coptic manuscripts consists of seven fragmentary sheets of leather bearing spells for divination, protection, healing, personal advancement, cursing, and the satisfaction of sexual desire. Purchased from the heir of the famous early Egyptologist and draftsman Robert Hay (1799–1863), the manuscripts arrived at the British Museum in 1869. A new study prompted by the urgent conservation needs of the corpus has sought to provide a model integrated approach to the publication of ancient texts as archaeological objects.

Sponsors

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    All education programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Principal support is provided by Dieter and Susan M. Kaesgen and Gail C. and Elliott L. Schlang. Major annual support is provided by Brenda and Marshall Brown, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, Medical Mutual of Ohio, the Edwin D. Northrup II Fund, Shurtape Technologies, and the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation. Generous annual support is provided by Gini and Randy Barbato, the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Char and Chuck Fowler, the Giant Eagle Foundation, Linda Harper, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., Susan LaPine, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Logsdon Family Fund for Education, Sarah Nash, Courtney and Michael Novak, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, the Pickering Foundation, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Suzanne Cushwa Rusnak and Jeff Rusnak, Ellen and Lowell Satre, in memory of Dee Schafer, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, the Sally and Larry Sears Fund for Education Endowment, Roy Smith, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Trilling Family Foundation, Jack and Jeanette Walton, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.