Roots of Magic episode

February 4, 2026

Martin Stadler on Magic and Religion at the Ancient Egyptian Temple of Edfu

Roots of Magic Interview 9

[Be sure to scroll down and look at the images!]

The Horus-temple complex at Edfu is the best-preserved Egyptian temple, with rich hieroglyphic inscriptions. As part of MagEIA, Martin Stadler is investigating this site with a view to understanding the ways in which the priestly practices there took place, and how the architecture of the temple (and its sister-structure, the mammisi or ‘birth-house’ [pictured below]) functioned as architectural talismans, channelling the power of the gods and of the priestly rituals taking place there. Among other topics, we discuss:

• The distinctive mythology of world-creation associated with the Edfu-temple, in which Horus is the creator-deity (among many other roles – we reflect on the ways in which Egyptian gods could be one-yet-many in a very distinctive way),
• The complex daily rituals and cycles of yearly festivals carried out by the different classes of priests, and a discussion of the very many different types of functionaries which we tend to discuss under the rubric of ‘priest’,
• The question of whether or in what way the god-statues in Egyptian temples (as well as the divine animals and other physical divinities) were seen as being the gods themselves,
• Why Martin Stadler feels that the concepts of ‘magic’ and ‘religion’ should – against much scholarly discussion – be differentiated when discussing the ancient Egyptian temple-cult, with Edfu as a case-study. However, the real categories at play are our old friend heka, famously ambivalent in its ethical valence, and something called akh, a powerful force which is always good,
• And – perhaps the coolest finding of Stadler’s research – the ways in which the temple-inscriptions, many of them adaptations of protective spells known from other sources as well, along with site-specific texts, interact on the architectural plane to create ‘force-fields’ of magical protection for the god, his statue, and his temple.

Interview Bio:

Martin Stadler is an Egyptologist specializing in Egyptian religion, ritual traditions and demotic literature. In phase 1 of MagEIA, he is focusing on the two apotropaic rituals sa-per (“protection of the house”) and meket-hau (“protection of the body”) in the Horus temple at Edfu, which were transferred to the temple context as adaptations of royal rituals. With its complete tradition of apotropaic rituals, the Horus temple offers a unique context that is to be systematically explored in a monographic study and made available for the understanding of comparable rituals. Stadler’s research is part of the Würzburger Edfu-Projects, which also include the Horus Behedety-Project, which he has led since 2016. As part of this project, he regularly conducts epigraphic campaigns at the Temple of Horus, the best-preserved temple in Egypt.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Alan H. Gardiner. Magic (Egyptian). In James Hastings, John A. Selbie, and Louis H. Gray, editors, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics VIII, pages 262–69. T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1915.

Denys A. Stocks. The Materials, Tools, and Work of Carving and Painting. In Vanessa Davies and Dimitri Laboury, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Egyptian Epigraphy and Paleography, pages 115–28. The University Press, Oxford, 2020.

 

Recommended Reading:

SHWEP Episode Recommended Reading

Themes

Apotropaic Magic, Egypt, Interview, Magic, Statues