Fragmentary roll of magical-cum-religious papyrus, age of Rameses
Turin, Museo delle Antichità Egizie, CGT 54065

Dozens of fragments of papyrus have been gathered together in this extraordinary collection of magical-cum-religious texts drafted in hieratic script. On the recto (horizontal fibres) they describe the origin of the world and how to protect against the forces of evil. The famous Monologue of Atum is here too: the creator god emerges from the inertia of primordial chaos and, from his own being, he generates the elements of the cosmos in the shape of pairs of gods and of everything that exists, simply by uttering their names. Men (rm t), on the other hand, spring from his tears (rmwt). There follows the Ritual for slaying Apopis, a snake who embodies negative forces.