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This volume is the first in a new series of editions of Coptic-language "magical" manuscripts from Egypt, written on papyrus, ostraca, parchment, and paper, and dating to between the fourth and twelfth centuries CE. Their texts attest to non-institutional rituals intended to bring about changes in the lives of those who used them - heal disease, curse enemies, bring about love or hatred, or see into the future. These manuscripts represent rich sources of information on daily life and lived religion of Egypt in the last centuries of Roman rule and the first centuries after the Arab conquest, giving us glimpses of the hopes and fears of people of this time, their conflicts and problems, and their vision of the human and superhuman worlds. This volume presents 37 new editions and descriptions of manuscripts, focusing on formularies or "handbooks", those texts containing instructions for the performance of rituals. Each of these is accompanied by a history of its acquisition, a material description, and presented with facing text and translations, tracings of accompanying images, and explanatory notes to aid in understanding the text

Preliminary Material /P. Limb , N. Etherington and P. Midgley -- Indigenous Southern Africans And Colonialism: Introduction /Norman Etherington -- Reactions To Colonialism In Southern Africa: Some Historiographical Reflections /Chris Saunders -- Fenders Of Space: Kgatla Territorial Expansion Under Boer And British Rule, 1840–1920 /Fred Morton -- Intermediaries Of Class, Nation, And Gender In The African Response To Colonialism In South Africa, 1890s–1920s /Peter Limb -- Pastoral Modernity, Territoriality And Colonial Transformations In Central Namibia, 1860s–1904 /Dag Henrichsen -- Social And Political Responses To Colonialism On The Margins: Community, Chieftaincy And Ethnicity In Bulilima-Mangwe, Zimbabwe, 1890–1930 /Enocent Msindo -- Conflict And Negotiation Along The Lower Vaal River: Correspondence From The Tswana-Language Newspaper Mokaeri Oa Becuana /Stephen C. Volz and Part T. Mgadla -- Renaissance Men: Ntsikana, A. C. Jordan, S. E. K. Mqhayi And South Africa's Cultural Awakening /Peter Midgley -- African Intellectual And Literary Responses To Colonial Modernity In South Africa /Ntongela Masilela -- \'Then Came The Whiteman\': An African Poet And Polemicist On The Fateful Encounter /Grant Christison -- World Visions: 'Native Missionaries,' Mission Networks And Critiques Of Colonialism In Nineteenth-Century South Africa And Canada /Tolly Bradford -- Bibliography /P. Limb , N. Etherington and P. Midgley -- Index /P. Limb , N. Etherington and P. Midgley.