The Headless God

Isis)." In P XII 11, 15ff., as in the Demotic papyri, he must strike the opponent with discord and fever: here too, Typhon is to the magician the "terrible demon in the empty space of air, the invisible one, All-Ruler, god of the gods," but also the "bringer of ruin and the one who creates loneliness, who hates it when things are well in a house."

Just as little does anything in the last spell of P IV, the purpose of which is not clearly evident, point toward an equation of Typhon with Osiris. Seth's image must be placed on a brick; one draws him as a running donkey with various magical words on the limbs of the animal, including Sabaoth and Abrasax. And a prayer is directed toward him which, alongside many typical invocations of Seth such as Jô Erbêth, Jô Pakerbêth, Jô Bolchôsêth, contains the passage: "It is you who shakes the cosmos, I call upon you, the great Typhon, you twice-great Typhon!" Nothing in all these testimonies for Seth points to a solar significance of the demon. Instead, he appears as the eternal enemy of the sun god. It is he "who shakes earth and heaven, who thunders, who has swallowed the serpent and encompasses the moon and extinguishes the circle of the sun hourly." Thus is Seth invoked in P VII 366, where he is cited as a divining god for a light-spell.¹ According to Plutarch, Typhon causes eclipses of the sun; he also brings about its daily setting, and even its hourly waning is attributed to Seth's fault. The serpent he has swallowed² is the sun: it is called "serpent at the head of Ra" in Egyptian testimonies, to which TH. HOPFNER, Offenbarungszauber II p. 88, points.

Figures of the Roman curse tablets.

When searching further for Seth-Typhon as a solar or headless demon, the necessity forces itself above all to seek him in his most original area of veneration, in the

1 Thus also P. VII 365a, IV 1323. EITREM believes he finds a similar passage in P VII 995f. (1st col. of the verso), where he completes the gap in P: "Lord of all, you who send rain... [you who have swallowed?] the serpent" (Journ. of eg. Archaeol. 11, 1925, 80); I read and complete: "you are the one who thunders, the one who sends rain... [the one who dries up in] season and brings [rain showers upon the] dry earth"...

2 The magician has "lulled to sleep" the serpent in alliance with Seth according to P IV 190; see above p. 19.