Friday, July 22, 2022

 

Some Opposites

Calvert Watkins, "Some Celtic Phrasal Echoes," in A.T.E. Matonis and Daniel F. Melia, edd., Celtic Language, Celtic Culture: A Festschrift for Eric P. Hamp (Van Nuys: Ford & Bailie, 1990), pp. 47-56, rpt. in his Selected Writings, ed. Lisi Oliver, Vol. II: Culture and Poetics (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1994 = Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 80), pp. 741-750 (at 745):
In 1967, resuming an oral presentation of 1958, Reinhold Merkelbach demonstrated that the virtually identical oaths on two papyri of the first and third centuries C.E. (respectively, P[ubbl.] S[oc.] I[tal.] 1290 and 1162) represent the oath of the Isis mysteries. It begins with a dualistic litany
I swear ([ὀμν]ύω) by the one who divided and separated earth from heaven, and darkness from light, and day from night, and sunrise from sunset, and life from death, and birth from corruption, and black from white, and dry from wet, and sea from land, and bitter from sweet, and flesh from spirit,
and continues ἐπόμνυμαι δὲ καὶ οὓς π[ροσκυνῶ θ]εοὺς,
and I swear by the gods whom I worship (that I will preserve and protect the mysteries vouchsafed to me).
I don't have access to Pubblicazioni della Società italiana per la ricerca dei papiri greci e latini in Egitto, but I find the Greek in Albert Bernabé, ed., Poetae Epici Graeci: Testimonia et Fragmenta, Pars II: Orphicorum et Orphicis Similium Testimonia et Fragmenta, Fasciculus 2 (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2005), p. 197, fragment 621, lines 10-19 (here without dots beneath doubtful letters):
[Ὀμν]ύω κατὰ τοῦ διχάσαντος κ[αὶ κρί-]        10
ναντος τὴν γῆν ἀπ' οὐρανοῦ κα[ὶ σκότος]
[ἀπὸ] φωτὸς καὶ ἡμέραν ἐκ νυ[κτὸς]
[καὶ ἀ]νατολὴν ἀπὸ δύσεως καὶ [ζωὴν]
[ἀπὸ] θανάτου καὶ γένεσιν ἀπ[ὸ φθορᾶς]
[καὶ μ]έλαν [ἀ]πὸ λευκρῦ καὶ ξηρὸ̣[ν ἀπὸ]        15
[ὑγρ]οῦ καὶ ἔν̣[υδ]ρον ἀπὸ χερσ[αίου καὶ]
[πικ]ρὸν ἀπὸ γλυκέως καὶ σάρκ[α ἀπὸ]
[ψυχ]ῆς, ἐπόμνυμαι δὲ καὶ οὓς π[ροσκυνῶ]
[θεο]ὺς συντηρήσειν καὶ φυλά[ξειν]
The object of συντηρήσειν καὶ φυλάξειν appears in the similar opening of the fragment (Bernabé, p. 194, lines 6-7):
[τὰ παραδεδ]ομένα μοι μυστή-
[ρια καὶ τιμήσειν τὸν] πατέρα Σαραπίωνα.
Related post: Opposites.



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