Anuj Amin

Imagine a world where demons are an everyday reality, affecting everything from personal health to legal outcomes. Now, consider that people from different religious backgrounds—Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians—had a common solution to deal with these supernatural threats: enchanted bowls. Aramaic incantation bowls, dating to the fourth through seventh centuries CE, constitute an incredible corpus of material culture that redefines the narrative of popular religion in late antiquity. This multidisciplinary investigation combines history, anthropology, art, and the digital humanities to reconstruct the narrative that these bowls provide.