Ancient Egypt Magic therapy techniques to sexual turmoil

Ancient Egypt Magic therapy techniques to sexual turmoil

The arrival of the beloved acts like an amulet (wedja) and restores the young man to health. In another poem from the same papyrus (ChesterBeatty /), the young man complains that the girl has lassoed him with her hair, caught him with her eye, restrained him with her necklace and branded him with her seal. These metaphors are all equivalent to magical techniques.

Many cultures have thought the ability of a woman to throw a man into sexual turmoil to be akin to sorcery. This may partly explain the aggressive tone of some love charms directed at women. A rare second millennium BC example has already been mentioned

With this spell the woman is to be reduced to following the man like a cow follows her calf. Love charms are very common in the Graeco-Egyptian papyri

Even those written in Greek involve Egyptian deities. Isis was regarded as the paradigm of faithful love. Spells promise to make a woman love the client as devotedly as Isis loved Osiris. If the woman in question was already married, or fond of someone else, the spell would make her hate her present partner as fiercely as Isis hated Seth.

In some spells from the Graeco-Egyptian papyri, the procedure ends with the magician or his client anointing his penis with a specially prepared ointment and having intercourse with the woman.

Since the couple are already sleeping together, the primary purpose of the spell is to keep the woman faithful. The client can then be sure that he is the father of any children she may bear.

Under Egyptian law a man was obliged to divide his property between the children of his wife, so marital fidelity was an issue of financial as well as emotional importance.

Some funerary spells promise that a man will be able to have sex with his wife and beget children after death.

Spell 576 of The Coffin Texts is a more general spell for enjoying sex in the afterlife. The rubric to the spell suggests that it may have been adapted from an 'aphrodisiac' used in life.

The spell is to be spoken over an amuletic bead of carnelian or amethyst placed on the man's right arm. The wording of the spell implies that not only will the man be able to have intercourse as often as he wants, but that he will always give his partner an orgasm.

Magico-medical texts from the twentieth century BC down to the fourth century AD contain herbal remedies for impotence and procedures to test a woman's ability to conceive. Comparatively few spells that promise to make a woman conceive are recorded.

It may have been felt that only a deity could create life in the womb. From at least the fifteenth century BC, childless women or couples are known to have visited temples to pray for help.