[4] Just how "underground" the practitioners that produced these texts were therefore remains contested, though Betz points to the admonitions to secrecy about the details of certain practices in certain of the papyri.

About half a dozen of the papyri were purchased in about 1827 by a man calling himself Jean d'Anastasi, who may have been Armenian, and was a diplomatic representative at the Khedivial court in Alexandria.

[5] He asserted that he obtained them at Thebes (modern Luxor), and he sold them to various major European collections, including the British Museum, the Louvre, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden.

H. D. Betz, who edited a translation of the collection, states that these pieces probably came from the library of an ancient scholar and collector of late antiquity based in Thebes, Egypt.

[6] A similar individual, known as he who appeared in Thebes, Prince Khamwas, was the fourth son of King Ramses II and high priest of Ptah in Memphis, Egypt.

The historical prince Khamwas, the fourth son of Ramses II, had been high priest of Ptah at Memphis and administrator of all the Memphite sanctuaries.

Posterity had transmitted his renown, and the Demotic tales that were spun around his memory depicted him and his fictional adversary Prince Naneferkaptah as very learned scribes and magicians devoted to the study of ancient monuments and writings.PGM XII and XIII were the first to be published, appearing in 1843 in Greek, and in a Latin translation in 1885.

A projected third volume, containing new texts and indices, reached the stage of galley proofs dated "Pentecost 1941", but the type was destroyed during the bombing of Leipzig in the Second World War.

[1] An English translation of Preisendanz's edited papyri, along with some additional Greek and Demotic texts, was produced in the 1980s by Hans Dieter Betz.

[citation needed] Betz observes, in the introduction to his translations, that while the papyri were produced in Greco-Roman Egypt, they contain many sections that are Greek in origin and nature.

He notes how Zeus, Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, and Aphrodite, among others, are portrayed not as Hellenic or Hellenised aristocrats, as in contemporary literature, but as demonic or even dangerous, much like in Greek folklore.

These spells range from impressive and mystical summonings of dark gods and daemons, to folk remedies and even parlor tricks; from portentous, fatal curses, to love charms, and cures for impotence and minor medical complaints.

Since some of these defixiones date from as early as the 500s BCE, and have been found as far afield as Athens, Asia Minor, Rome, and Sicily (as well as Egypt), this provides a degree of continuity, and suggests that some observations based on the PGM will not be altogether inapplicable to the study of the wider Greco-Roman world.

[dubious – discuss] Sometimes the Greek gods depart from their traditional Olympian natures familiar to classicists, and seem far more chthonic, demonic, and bestial.

This is partly the influence of Egyptian religion, in which beast cult and the terror of the divine were familiar elements; equally the context of magical texts makes such sinister deities appropriate.