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WLW - Women-Loving Wizard(esse)s? Lesbian love spells from Roman Egypt

I said there will be no dedicated femslash february-adjacent post this year, and in the end that turned out to be nominally true. That’s only because this article, which I didn’t plan too far ahead, is a few weeks late due to unforeseen irl compilations. In my previous, also unplanned, article I’ve included a brief introduction to the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri, and discussed some unusual attestations of Hecate in them - perhaps some of the most fun material to research not directly related to anything I usually write about I’ve had the pleasure to go through in a long while. This text corpus is a gift that keeps on giving in general, but perhaps the single most welcome surprise was learning that there are at least two - possibly three - examples of lesbian love spells in it. While I considered waiting for pride month to cover them, I ultimately decided to publish an article about them much sooner (I have a different, highly esoteric pride month special in the pipeline already though, worry not).

Without further ado, let’s take a look at these unique wlw (women-loving wizard) testimonies and their historical context. Which supernatural entities were, at least for these women, apparent lesbian allies? Why does one of the lesbian spells contain an elaborate poetic passage pairing Osiris with Persephone? Why Lucian of Samosata might be the key to determining if 2 or 3 lesbian love spells are available to researchers? Answers to all of these questions - and more - await under the cut!

Before you proceed, I feel obliged to warn you that the article discusses historical homophobia, so if that might bother you, you’ll have to skip one of the sections. Furthermore, some of the images, as well as parts of the text itself, are not safe for work.

Part 1: the spells

Through the article I will refer to the discussed texts as “lesbian spells”. This is merely intended as a convenient label, not a definite statement - we can’t be 100% sure of the orientation of everyone involved, obviously. On top of that, none of the spells give us any hints about the terms the women involved in their composition used to describe themselves. Needless to say, the fact that the discussed spells even exist is nothing short of a miracle. The corpus of magical papyri and other related objects like inscribed tablets and gems is relatively small, and covers a short period of time - for the most part just the first four centuries CE. On top of that not all of them are specifically love spells. For comparison, while there is a sizable corpus of Mesopotamian love incantations spanning over two millennia, not even a single lesbian one has been identified among them so far (Frans A. M. Wiggermann, Sexuality A. In Mesopotamia in RlA vol. 12, p. 414).

They also represent one of the only indisputable examples of ancient texts in whose composition women who at the very least desired relationships with other women were involved (Bernardette J. Brooten, Love Between Women. Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, p. 105). How active that involvement was might be difficult to ascertain, though.

Spell 1: angel or corpse daimon? The first spell of the discussed variety I’ve stumbled upon lacks a distinct title, but it’s included in the basic modern edition of many of the magical papyri, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells edited by Hand Dieter Betz, as PGM XXXII. 1-19 ( p. 266):

It was discovered in Hawara, an archeological site in the Fayum Oasis, and most likely dates to the second century CE (Love Between…, p. 77). At the time of its initial publication, some doubts were expressed about whether it’s really a love spell by authors such as Richard Wünsch - as you can imagine, for at least implicitly homophobic reasons - but it’s been the consensus view for a long while that it's explicitly lesbian. I left the brief comment included in the standard modern edition on the screencap above to highlight this. It needs to be stressed here that the opposition to this now mainstream interpretation was a minority opinion in the first decades of the 20th century already, and was conclusively rejected as early as in the 1930s (Arthur S. Hunt notably contributed to this) and basically never entertained by any authors since (Love Between…, p. 80-81). Sadly, there is not much to say about the dramatis personae of the spell. Herais’ name is Greek, but her mother’s, Thermoutharin, is Egyptian; both Helen and Sarapias are Greek names, but the latter is theophoric and invokes, as you can probably guess, Serapis. This sort of combination is fairly standard for Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt, and it’s not possible to determine if one or both of the women involved were Greeks who settled in Egypt, Egyptians who adopted Greek names, or if they came from mixed families (Love Between…, p. 79).

While it’s likely Herais simply commissioned the spell from a specialist (Love Between…, p. 109), it’s worth noting that in the most recent commentary on it I was able to find, Heta Björklund argues that she was a magician herself (Invocations and Offerings as Structural Elements in the Love Spells in Papyri Graecae Magicae, p. 38). She also assumes some of the heterosexual love spells were the work of female magicians. Sadly, in the relatively short period of time I dedicated to preparations for this article I failed to find any study which would make it possible to establish whether this is a proposal with more widespread support. Female conjurers are certainly not uncommon in works of fiction, though, so even if the magical papyri were mostly written by men until proven otherwise I see no strong reason to doubt that we’re really dealing with a wlw (women-loving wizard).

The vocabulary employed in Herais’ spell is identical as in the heterosexual love spells. However, since examples aimed at both men and women are known, and do not significantly differ in that regard, the fact most of them were written by men seeking to secure the love of women doesn’t necessarily imply Herais necessarily took a masculine role herself just because she adhered to the same convention regarding magical formulas (Love Between…, p. 105).

An interesting aspect of the spell are its theological implications. At least from Herais’ perspective, Anubis, Hermes and “the rest down below” - in other words, a host of other unspecified deities residing in the underworld, not to mention the entity invoked to help her - not only would have no objections to her orientation, but would actively aid her in securing the love of the target of her affection (Love Between…, p. 80).

Invoking deities is basically a standard in love spells, regardless of the orientation of the people involved. Three distinct categories of them can be identified: Aphrodite and her entourage (ex. Eros and Peitho); heavenly deities (like Helios and Selene) and, perhaps unexpectedly, underworld deities (Hecate, Hermes, Persephone and others) - and, by extension, ghosts. From the first century CE onward it was actually the last group which appears most commonly in love spells. This likely reflects their association with magic and fate (Invocations and Offerings…, p. 45-46).

While there’s no point in dwelling upon the references to Anubis and Hermes, which are self-explanatory, there is some disagreement about the nature of Evangelos, who Herais basically asks to act as a supernatural wingman for her. Björklund argues that he should be interpreted as an angel or divine messenger (Invocations and Offerings…, p. 38). This is not implausible at first glance. Angels are invoked in multiple other spells from the magical papyri as helpers. For example, PGM VII 862-918 focuses on a request to Selene to send one of her angels presiding over a specific hour of the night (Leda Jean Ciraolo, Supernatural Assistants in the Greek Magical Papyri, p. 283; as a side note, there's a chance I will discuss early angels - especially the oddities like PGM angels - in a separate future article).

However, another view is that Evangelos was a “corpse daimon” (nekudaimon) - this would offer a good parallel with other love spells. What was a corpse daimon, though? Simply put, the restless, but not necessarily malevolent, spirit of a person who died prematurely (Love Between…, p. 80). In Egypt this idea intersected with other views on the origin of ghosts - for example that they could be people who died so long ago nobody made tomb offerings to them (Ljuba Merlina Bortolani, Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt. A Study of Greek and Egyptians Traditions of Divinity, p. 224). It’s possible that in some cases, perhaps including Herais’, papyri with spells have been deposited in, or at least read above, the graves of people who died in circumstances which made them eligible to become corpse daimons, in order to secure their help (Love Between…, p. 80). There is also evidence that food could be left for them in appropriate places instead, as attested for example in the “love spell of attraction in the presence of heroes or gladiators or those who died violently” (ωγὴ ἐπὶ ἡρώων ἢ μονομάχων ἢ βιαίων; PGM IV 1390-1495). This was a practice derived from a common type of offering to Hecate and her ghost entourage (Magical Hymns…, p. 223). It’s worth noting a daimon didn’t necessarily have to be human - the “cat spell for all purposes" (ἡ πρᾶξις τοῦ αἰλούρου περὶ πάσης πράξεως; PGM III 1-164), described as equally effective whether employed as a love spell, enmity spell or… a way to alter the results of chariot races (a relatively common goal in the magical papyri). instructs how to enlist the help of a “cat daimon” (τὸν δαίμονα τοῦ αἰλούρου). In this case the magician has to first “create” this entity by offering a cat as sacrifice, though, instead of invoking a preexisting daimon (Invocations and Offerings…, p. 32).

Spell 2: Osiris, Persephone and inflamed liver

While the spell discussed above seems to be brought up online the most often in discussions of references to lesbian and gay love in antiquity, the second known example is much more elaborate. Its standard translation was published in 1990 in the first volume of Robert W. Daniel’s and Franco Maltomini’s Supplementum Magicum, intended as a supplement to the already mentioned compendium of translated magical papyri (p. 137-139):

The text is inscribed on a tablet discovered in Hermopolis, and dates to the third or fourth century CE (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 132). It’s possible it was commissioned from a magician, rather than written by Sophia herself. Both her name and Gorgonia’s are not declined, which might indicate that a magician simply inserted them into blank spaces in a preexisting formulary offered to clients (Love Between…, p. 88-89). It’s nonetheless quite interesting as a work of literature, even if it was just a stock formulary sold over and over again. Some sections deliberately use poetic forms. Furthermore, some of the long compound words in them are entirely without parallel. It’s possible that this was a conscious source meant to create a peculiar overwhelming atmosphere, suitable for invoking ghosts and underworld deities (Love Between…, p. 88). While Herais’ spell is brief and vague and doesn’t really reveal much about her desires, beyond establishing that the object of her affection was a woman and that she believed supernatural entities would plausibly approve of pursuing her, Sophia’s commissioned(?) one seems to involve a pretty detailed fantasy. Of course, an argument can be made that it doesn’t necessarily specifically reflect her individual desires, but rather the widespread perception of bath houses as places suitable for flirtation and related ventures (Love Between…, p. 89). Still, while obviously we’ll never be able to know, it’s interesting to wonder if she perhaps had to choose from a larger repertoire of love spells offered by a magician (or perhaps even by multiple magicians) and went with the formula which matched her expectations to the greatest degree. Interestingly, the idea of a love spell being more effective in bath houses recurs in multiple magical papyri. The view that they can be haunted was fairly widespread, which made them a favored location for casting spells of all sorts, to be fair. The request for the “corpse daimon” to masquerade as a bath attendant to help with accomplishing a specific goal is unparalleled, though (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 132-133).

A combinative "Isis-Persephone" (or vice versa) from the late second century CE (Wikimedia Commons) As far as other appeals to supernatural entities go, it might be surprising to see Osiris mentioned in association with Persephone, Cerberus, the Erinyes and various elements of topography of the Greek underworld. It is presumed that this passage depends on the identification between him (as well as Serapis) and Hades, which is fairly well documented in Ptolemaic sources (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 146). However, it’s also worth pointing out that Persephone could serve as the interpretatio graeca of Isis, though it was by no means exclusive, and the latter could in various contexts or time periods be linked with Demeter, Cybele, Selene, Hecate, Aphrodite and others instead (Magical Hymns…, p. 9-10)

The unnamed “messenger” of Osiris is presumed to be Hermes, invoked not under his proper name but under a standard Homeric epithet. Referring to him as a “boy” most likely reflects the convention of depicting him as a child, which is attested through Hellenistic and Roman periods (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 146-147).

In addition to invoking a nameless corpse daimon and a number of deities, the spell uses a lot of voces magicae - magical formulas with no apparent meaning, sometimes the result of religious terms or even theonyms from langues other than Greek and Egyptian . Perhaps the most interesting inclusion among these is “Ereschigal”. This is obviously a derivative of Mesopotamian Ereshkigal, though as I outlined in my previous article, we’re essentially dealing with a ship of Thesus in this case; and if we are to take this as a reference to a specific deity rather than a hocus pocus formula, it’s best to think of it as an unusual epithet of Hecate as opposed to a conscious reference to a deity from a theological system otherwise basically entirely absent from Greco-Egyptian magic. The other interesting cameos are Azael and Beliam, a misspelling or variant form of Belial (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 144).

One last detail which requires some explanation is the reference to inflaming the liver, in addition to heart and soul. This is not a magical curiosity, but rather a reflection of a belief widespread all across the Roman Empire in the first centuries CE: the liver was believed to be the organ responsible for passions of various types. Invoking it alongside the heart in spells is well documented (Love Between…, p. 90).

Spell 3: the pronoun controversy

There might be a third lesbian spell. It is inscribed on two lead tablets from Panoplis, most likely from the second century CE (Love Between…, p. 90-91). The provenance was possible to establish based on the presence of the name Tmesios, “midwife”, which in Egyptian was written with the same determinative as the names of gods. It is most likely an euphemistic reference to Heqet, the goddess of midwifery, who was a very popular deity of Panoplis (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 116-117). The most recent edition I’m aware of is included in the Supplementum Magicum, vol. 1 (p. 116):

The text is undeniably a standard love spell. It even features an appeal to a corpse daimon - a certain Horion, son of Saropus - like the two discussed above (Love Between…, p. 91). The fact he is invoked by name is unusual - most corpse daimons are left anonymous (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 115). A further unique detail is the inclusion of a small drawing of a mummy - generally assumed to be Horion:

The supposed corpse daimon, via Supplementum Magicum vol. 1, p. 116; reproduced here for educational purposes only. An alternate proposal is that this is a symbolic representation of Nike being affected by the spell, as there are no other depictions of corpse daimons, and such entities are consistently described as mobile, which to be fair indeed doesn’t fit a mummy particularly well (Christopher A. Faraone, Four Missing Persons, a Misunderstood Mummy, and Further Adventures in Greek Magical Texts, p. 151-152). Still, unless further evidence emerges, there’s no reason not to stick to the consensus view.

Next to the mummy drawing, the other mystery is the reference to a period of five months. Why exactly would Nike be under the effect of the spell for that period of time remains uncertain (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 117). It might be a nod to the notion of “trial marriage”, which also lasted for five months. After this period, the parties involved would determine whether they want to formalize the relationship with a written contract or part ways instead (Love Between…, p. 107). However, by far the main topic of debate regarding the spell is the gender of Pantous/Paitous. While Nike bears an undeniably feminine name, the other name is not spelled consistently even on the tablets themselves, and has no other attestations. This also holds true for Gorgonia from spell #2, but in her case there’s no ambiguity - the name is undeniably feminine. However, -ous can be a suffix of both feminine and masculine names; while pa- occurs in Egyptian names as a masculine prefix. To make things more complicated, in both cases the relative pronoun referring to Pantous/Paitous is feminine - but it has been suggested that this is a typo due to presence of an incision on the tablet which might indicate the scribe made a typo wanted to actually write the masculine form. The gender of this person is thus difficult to determine (Love Between…, p. 93-94).

The assumption that we’re dealing with a double typo, according to the authors of the most recent translation, is supported by similar typos in other magical papyri, where the context makes it easier to ascertain the gender of the parties involved (Supplementum Magicum…, p. 117). Bernadette J. Brooten argues this is an overabundance of caution, though, since the spell under discussion is the only example where every single pronoun would have to be a typo. Furthermore, there are no other errors in the text (Love Between…, p. 95).

Brooten also offers an interesting solution to the uncertainty stemming from Pantous/Paitous’ name itself: even if it is masculine after all, its bearer might have been a woman who took on a masculine persona in some contexts, complete with a masculine name, or perhaps a nickname. She offers a precedent for this interpretation: the character Megilla/Megillos from Lucian of Samosata’s Dialogues of the Courtesans (Love Between…, p. 96). Since exploring this topic fully goes beyond the scope of the spells themselves, I will explore it in more detail in a separate section.

Part 2: WLWizards in context

From Plato to Lucian

In the fifth of Lucian’s dialogues a certain Leaina discusses recent events in her life with a friend. She is, as you can probably tell from the title of the whole work, a courtesan. At some point in the not-so-distant past she encountered a person who she refers to as Megilla, but who, as she stresses, at one point used the name Megillos in private. The character is AFAB, but for all intents and purposes presents masculinely - “like the most manly of athletes”, to be precise, as they describe it (Love Between…, p. 52). They engage in typically masculine pursuits, like holding symposiums, cut their hair short like young men (but wear a wig in public to hide that) and bring up that another character, Demonassa, is their wife in order to stress own masculinity (Andreas Fountoulakis, Silencing Female Intimacies: Sexual Practices, Silence and Cultural Assumptions in Lucian, Dial. Meretr. 5, p. 119-120). From a modern POV, it might appear that Megillos is a partially closeted trans man whose name is the masculine form of his deadname, but while this would be an obvious angle for a retelling to take, in reality the character is an example of a Greco-Roman stereotype of a woman attracted to women. Lucian refers to Megilla/Megillos as a hetairistria. He states that this rare term refers to women who pursue relationships with other women, and explains that this basically makes them like men (Love Between…, p. 23).

It’s important to stress we have no real evidence that this word - or any other ancient labels of similar sort - were actually used by any women to describe themselves (Love Between…, p. 7). Lucian most likely decided to use it as a nod to Plato (Love Between…, p. 53). The plural form, hetairistriai, is used to refer to women attracted to women in his Symposium (Love Between…, p. 41). It was most likely etymologically related to hetaira, in this context to be understood as something like “companion” (though it could also refer to a courtesan - as it does in the original title of Lucian’s work). It’s fairly rare in later sources, though dictionaries from the early centuries CE confirm it was understood as a synonym of tribas (plural: tribades), which was more or less the default term for women attracted to women in Greek, and later on as a loanword in Latin as well. An anonymous medieval Byzantine commentary on Clement of Alexandria, a second century CE Christian writer (more on him later) provides a second synonym, lesbia, which constitutes the oldest attested example of explicitly using this term to refer to a woman attracted to women, rather than to an inhabitant of Lesbos, though the context is not exactly identical with its modern application as a self-designation, obviously (Love Between…, p. 4-5). In Symposium the existence of hetairistriai is presented neutrally, as a fact of life - the reference to them is a part of the well known narrative about primordial beings consisting of two people each. Plato apparently later changed his mind, though, and in Laws, his final work, he condemns them as acting against nature (Love Between…, p. 41). It has been argued that the negative attitude might have been widespread in the classical period, though for slightly different reasons - it is possible that relationships between women would be seen as a transgression against the dominant hierarchy of power, on which the notions of polis and oikos rested (Silencing Female…, p. 113). As far as I can tell this is speculative, though.

While Plato’s rhetoric about nature finds many parallels in later sources - up to the present conservative discourse of all stripes worldwide (though obviously it is not necessarily the effect of reading Plato) - other arguments could be mustered to justify opposition to relationships between women as well. In one of his epigrams the third century BCE poet Asclepiades decided to employ theology to that end. He declared that the relationship between two women named Bitto and Nannion was an affront to Aphrodite; a scholion accompanying this text clarifies that they were tribades (Love Between…, p. 42). Note that I don’t think the fact that all three of the lesbian spells don’t invoke Aphrodite is necessarily evidence of the women who wrote or commissioned them adhering to a similar interpretation of her character, though - especially since they are separated by a minimum of some 500 years than the aforementioned source. While obviously we can’t entirely rule out that Asclepiades’ poem reflected a sentiment which wasn’t just his personal view regarding Aphrodite, it seems much more likely to me that the fact all three spells postdate the times when underworld deities and ghosts started to successfully encroach upon her role in this genre of texts is more relevant here. "Masculinization" and related phenomena

While clearly hostile, neither Plato’s nor Asclepiades’ works contain the tropes on which Lucian’s dialogue depended. What has been characterized by modern authors as “masculinization” of women attracted to other women only arose as a trend in literature after the rise of the Roman Empire, especially from the reign of Augustus onward (Love Between…, p. 42-43). This reflected the fact that Roman thinkers - as well as their Greek contemporaries - apparently struggled with grasping the idea of sex in which they couldn’t neatly delineate who is passively penetrated and who is actively penetrating. This resulted in the conclusion that surely one of the two women involved must have played the “masculine”, active role, and that sex between women must also have been penetrative. In some cases this involved confabulations about what some described in scholarship as an “some unnamed phallus-like appendage” (Love Between…, p. 6). A good example of an author wholly dedicated to this idea is the second century CE dream interpretation enthusiast Artemidoros. He evaluated sex between women as “unnatural” - a category in which he also placed oral, which he however saw as an act which by default had a man on the receiving end (Love Between…, p. 181). The sole passage in his opus magnum dealing with sex between women can be seen below (translation via Daniel E. Harris-McCoy, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica. Text, Translation & Commentary, p. 149):

It needs to be pointed out here that earlier visual representations do not appear to be quite as fixated on this point. Evidence includes a Greek red figure vine vessel dated to 515-495 BCE or so decorated with a scene involving a woman touching another’s inner thigh and genitals; another slightly younger work of similar variety shows a kneeling woman reaching for another’s genitals, though it might depict depilation (contemporary sources indicate women plucked public hair by hand) rather than sex (Love Between…, p. 57-58). I must admit I really like the contemplative expression of the kneeling woman, which you can see on the screencap below (also available to view here):

Obviously, works of art such as the one above don’t necessarily reflect an ancient wlw point of view, and might very well be voyeuristic erotica which instead reflects what male painters presumed lesbian sex entailed. However, alongside a slightly bigger number of contemporary works possibly depicting couples in other situations they nonetheless make it possible to establish that the participants aren’t really differentiated from each other - in other words, they neither present differently, nor seem to be separated by age (Love Between…, p. 59).

Needless to say, it’s difficult to tell if either the older or the newer sources reflected actual trends in presentation among women attracted to women - with small exceptions, like the spells this article ultimately focuses on, we have next to no texts actually composed by them or for them, and the same caveat applies to visual arts. The majority of sources we are left with were, as you can probably already tell based on the sample above, written by men who at the absolute best considered them immoral (Silencing Female…, p. 112-113). For this reason, evaluating whether Lucian’s Megilla/Megillos is entirely literary fiction or merely a mocking exaggeration, and by extension whether she can be used as an argument in discussion about the identity of Pantous/Paitous from the third spell, is difficult at best.

For what it’s worth, an anonymous physiognomic treatise from the fourth century does mention that there are “women who have sex with women whose appearance is feminine, but who are more devoted to masculine women, who correspond more to a masculine type of appearance”, but further passages in this work would indicate that this might be yet another case of stereotyping rather than a nuanced account of varying presentation (Love Between…, p. 56-57). One specific aspect of Megilla/Megillos' character appears to match a single other source as well. Claudius Ptolemy, a second century astronomer and astrologer, offers a twist on the stereotype relevant to his primary interests. He states it is one of the “diseases of the soul” in his Tetrabiblos. He characterizes it as a result of a specific combination of constellations and planets (a term which in this context also encompassed the sun and the moon) at the time of an individual’s birth. Based on the specific scenario, women might become tribades - which according to Claudius Ptolemy means behaving in a masculine manner and pursuing relationships with other women secretly or openly, with the most extreme possible configuration resulting in a propensity to refer to another woman as one’s “lawful wife” (Love Between…, p. 124-126). Once again, it’s not really possible to determine if this reflects a genuine convention - though it does more or less parallel how Megilla/Megillos describes her partner. Evaluating how accurate the available sources are is made even more difficult by the fact that the “masculinization” was often paired with other literary devices meant to cast relationships between women as an “alien” or immoral phenomenon. Quite commonly they could be described as something utterly foreign or anachronistic, as opposed to a part of everyday life in contemporary Rome (Love Between…, p. 42-44). The second century writer Iamblichos, author of the lost Babyloniaka, or at the very least the popularity of his work in antiquity, arguably represents an example of this phenomenon. On the moral level, Iamblichos considered love between women “wild and lawless”, though he simultaneously had no issue writing about it, one would assume for voyeuristic purposes. His novel is only known from a summary preserved by the Byzantine patriarch Photius, but apparently enjoyed a degree of popularity earlier on. It described an affair between Berenike, a fictional daughter of an unspecified ruler of Egypt (fwiw, multiple women from the Ptolemaic dynasty bore this name), and a woman named Mesopotamia (sic), and their eventual marriage (Love Between…, p. 51). In contrast with the other, more famous Babyloniaka by Berossos, no primordial fish people or sagacious rulers with unnaturally long life spans make an appearance. A daring project to combine the two has yet to be attempted. Jewish and Christian reception

The Greco-Roman condemnations of relationships between women was also adopted in early centuries CE by Jewish and Christian writers. In the former case a notable example is the Sfira, a rabbinic theological commentary on Leviticus composed at some point before 220 CE. The passage dealing with 18:3 - “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt (... )and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan” - asserts that marriages between women were a custom among Egyptians and Canaanites. This is unlikely to be a faithful ethnographic report; rather, something perceived negatively is attributed exclusively to foreigners (Love Between…, p. 64-65). As far as Christian sources go, pretty similar rhetoric can also be found in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Love Between…, p. 64). Another notable early Christian author to adopt similar views was Clement of Alexandria, whose condemnations combined quotations from Paul’s letter, the apocryphal Apocalypse of Peter (which he viewed as canonical), and a host of Greek and Roman philosophers, most notably Plato - as you can guess, specifically the passage from Laws which already came up earlier (Love Between…, p. 320-321). He dedicates a lot of space to condemning marriages between women, which he describes as an “unspeakable practice” amounting to women imitating men (Love Between…, p. 322). It’s a part of a longer diatribe against even the slightest hints of gender nonconformity, which also condemns, among other things, men who shave their facial hair (Love Between…, p. 323-324). There’s a lot of other smash hits in Clement’s work, including an extensive section focused on, to put it colloquially, theological considerations about cum, very creative mixed religious-zoological approach to the digestive system of hares, as well as some more “mundane” but still pretty chilling apologia for domestic abuse, which I will spare you from. For an author from Alexandria, he also seems oddly ignorant about Egyptian sources, as at one point he claims that the fact Egyptians worship animals puts them morally ahead of Greeks, because animals do not commit adultery. I am sorry to report that adultery between Egyptian gods is, as a matter of fact, directly referenced in the magical papyri, which are roughly contemporary with Clement - specifically in PGM IV 94-153 (The Greek…, p. 39):

Concluding thoughts The sources discussed above are mostly supposed to illustrate that while it’s possible to study the prevailing attitudes among the contemporaries of the “protagonists” of the spells, it’s not really easy to say what their private lives were like. We don’t know how open they were about their preferences; how they presented; what, if any, label they used to refer to themselves. We can’t even ascertain if any of them were ever actually in relationships with other women, and whether the norm for women like them - if such norms even existed - was to pursue brief trysts or commitment for life, in parallel with aims of the authors of at least some of the heterosexual love spells (Love Between…, p.105-107).

In what after almost 30 years remains, as far as I am aware, the single publication with the most extensive discussion of the spells, Bernardette J. Brooten argued that since marriages between women are mentioned in five sources roughly contemporary with them - by Lucian of Samosata, Clement of Alexandria, Claudius Ptolemy, Iamblichos, and in the Sifra - they must have been an actually observed custom in Egypt in the early centuries CE. She argues that since marriages were basically personal legal agreements, it theoretically wouldn’t be impossible for two women to pursue such a solution (Love Between…, p. 66; note the fact the Sfira also refers to marriage between women as a Canaanite custom, which no primary sources from any period corroborate, is not addressed). I don’t think her intent was malicious, but I must admit I’m skeptical if it’s possible to reconstruct much chiefly based on sources which, as you could see in the previous section of the article, are mocking at best and openly hostile at worst, and a small handful of actual first hand testimonies which due to their genre sadly provide very little information. Sadly, we ironically can tell more about how the women from the spells thought corpse daimons functioned than how they envisioned the relationships they evidently desired.

To illustrate the difficulties facing researchers, imagine trying to reconstruct what the life of the average lesbian in the English-speaking world in the 2010s would be like with your sole points of reference being a single episode of a Netflix show with a mildly offensive gender nonconforming character, a press article written by an eastern European priest ranting about “gender ideology” imported from abroad corrupting children, a fanfic written by a homophobic weeb who jacks off to lesbian porn, and a small handful of contextless blog post actually written by wlw, but not necessarily entirely focused on anything related to her identity. The results wouldn’t be great, I’d imagine. The sources mustered by Brooten ultimately aren’t far from that, I’m afraid (I leave it as an intellectual exercise for you to determine which of the satirical modern comparisons applies to which) - thus it’s difficult for me not to see her conclusions as perhaps leaning too far into the direction of wishful thinking. But, in the end, wishful thinking is not innately bad - I’d be lying if I said I don’t have a host of personal hypotheses which fall into the same category (one of these days I will explain why I think a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude doesn’t necessarily seem incompatible with Old Babylonian morals). Therefore, even though I’m more skeptical if the “protagonists” of the texts this article revolved around could truly pursue relationships on equal footing with other inhabitants of Roman Egypt, I can’t help but similarly hope that they found at least some semblance of happiness in the aftermath of the endeavors documented in the discarded magical formulas.

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