The Philinna Papyrus (PGM XX) is part of a collection of ancient Greek spells written in hexameter verse.
[2] The verso of the papyrus preserves parts of two further columns, in a cursive hand from about the first century AD.
[2][4] Critical editions of the papyrus text are included in Papyri Graecae Magicae as PGM XX,[5] Supplementum Hellenisticum as SH 900,[6] and Greek and Egyptian Magical Formularies as GEMF 3.
[15] Lines 4–12 of the papyrus are a spell "προς παν κατακαλαυμα" ("for any inflammation"), attributed to a Syrian woman from Gadara.
[16] The inflammation that the spell treats is probably a sort of skin condition, though the word κατακαλυμα is also used in ancient Greek medical texts for fever.
[20] The Syrian woman's spell on the Philinna Papyrus is the earliest surviving instance of a historiola in ancient Greek magic.
[21] A third- or fourth-century AD papyrus from Oxyrhynchus[22] apparently preserves two prose versions of this spell.
[25] However, in later magical papyri the men to whom spells are attributed tend to be famous, and Matthew Dickie argues that the same is likely to be true of Philinna.