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From the introductory notes by an anonymous editor of the 1904 "The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden" by F.L. Griffith & Herbert Thompson:
This is the full version of the Leyden Papyrus, the largest known Greco-Egyptian magical text. While there is already an English translation of it online at the ‘Sacred Texts’ website, it lacks several magical figures and characters in the original demotic text (an exact reproduction thereof may be found at , in the ‘Core Texts’ section). I have added the original illustrations in this version, and have corrected the magical names from the Coptic glosses found in the original papyrus. The formatting has also been improved, to facilitate reading, and some fragmentary passages have been emendated using an updated translation (see Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation including the Demotic Spells, pgs. 195 ff.). Magical names and formulae have been capitalized.
The Leyden Papyrus contains many rituals for scrying, invocation of Gods, divination, and many other uses, as practiced in Greco-Roman Egypt. As such, it is a valuable addition to the corpus of Western magical literature.
(It is interesting to note that the invocation in column XXVIII was plagiarized by the author of the pseudo-Al-Azif Necronomicon.)
Notes on the PDF edition
This is the full version of the Leyden Papyrus, the largest known Greco-Egyptian magical text. While there is already an English translation of it online at the ‘Sacred Texts’ website, it lacks several magical figures and characters in the original demotic text (an exact reproduction thereof may be found at , in the ‘Core Texts’ section). I have added the original illustrations in this version, and have corrected the magical names from the Coptic glosses found in the original papyrus. The formatting has also been improved, to facilitate reading, and some fragmentary passages have been emendated using an updated translation (see Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation including the Demotic Spells, pgs. 195 ff.). Magical names and formulae have been capitalized.
The Leyden Papyrus contains many rituals for scrying, invocation of Gods, divination, and many other uses, as practiced in Greco-Roman Egypt. As such, it is a valuable addition to the corpus of Western magical literature.
(It is interesting to note that the invocation in column XXVIII was plagiarized by the author of the pseudo-Al-Azif Necronomicon.)
