La nourriture et les repas dans les Papyri Graecae Magicae

Abstract

In the PGM consumption of food or other substances has several aspects: a way of constraining a person or exploiting the power of words, but also an ideal framework of communication with supernatural beings. During ritual meals, the divine being is sometimes treated as an exceptional guest, xenos. In some other cases, the contact with the divine is realised in a more discrete way, while there is a type of detached – in time and space – commensality in which the practitioner offers rests of his food to the divine beings. There are, in ancient Greek religion, some practices and creeds that could render those strange meals more comprehensible.