ABSTRACT
Introduction Scholarship on the practice of ancient magic has increasingly come to recognize the role and activities of women, attempting to locate the female ritual specialists that may be traced within different written sources: for example, the possible writers of particular binding spells, the female fi gures that may be identifi ed in the PGM (see Faraone 1999; Dickie 2000, 2001; Pollard 2001; Eidinow 2013). This approach has generated an intriguing debate. On the one hand, it has revealed evidence of women’s agency, diffi cult to trace in ancient culture. On the other hand, it has been argued that this work has exacerbated an ancient stereotype associating women with “magic” (see discussion Stratton 2014). In turn, new approaches have suggested that it is modern preoccupations with gender and stereotypes – “the scholarly temptation to subject ancient traditions to a glaringly modern gaze” (Reed 2014, 111) – that have reinforced this idea, creating its apparent prevalence. However, despite the welcome exploration of such questions, it remains the case that scholarly discourse on magic primarily focuses on debating the presence, role, and activities of female practitioners.
