id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
grbs-391	Frankfurter, David	Fetus Magic and Sorcery Fears in Roman Egypt	2006	26	.pdf	application/pdf	9755	397	57	Without that status there is no recognizable being; and so the death can be insignificant—even with a newborn.19 Papyri recording miscarriages give special attention to the health or death of the mother, while no funeral is reported for the fetus (βρέφος)—even, in those cases, for a desired baby.20 Of course, there was as much flexibility in the construction of prenatal and neonatal status in early Roman Egypt as in modern times.21 One magical spell invokes Hermes to “come to me as βρέφη (come) to the wombs of women” (PGM VIII.2). It is certainly tempting to postulate some currency of beliefs in the Angry Unborn to which the use of a real fetus might appeal for ven- geance—something equivalent to those broad Mediterranean fears and invocations of the untimely (and generally older) dead, who often served as emissaries for curse-spells.13 How- ever, no such beliefs surrounding fetuses are implied in the Karanis papyrus, nor were symbols added to the Kellis wrap- pings to clarify the fetus’s meaning or to control its spirit in the way that ritual materials were supposed to have been added to corpses to invoke their spirits.14 Furthermore, it does not ap- pear from the archaeological record that fetal or neonate bodies were intrinsically regarded with the awe and fear pro- jected onto older aôroi, for many domestic structures in the Roman world, from Egypt to Gaul, had newborns and infants buried in the walls—apparently as a way of keeping them with- in the family.15 Excavations of a Roman-era necropolis in the Khargeh Oasis produced two entire tombs filled with the carefully-prepared bodies of children, newborns, and late-term Hope, personal communication, 7/12/2005).	cache/grbs-391.pdf	txt/grbs-391.txt