[Mysterious music plays, with flutes and harp trills]
Female Narrator: You’re looking at a scroll containing magical spells used for healing.
Jacco Dieleman: What we see here is a long scroll that was inscribed with recipes for healing various ailments such as skin rashes, eye diseases, burns and also probably miscarriage.
Female Narrator: Egyptologist Jacco Dieleman studies the interplay between ancient cultures through the writing they left behind, such as this scroll. The spells have a very clear structure spelled out in red and black ink. The red ink shows the recipe’s title and what kind of illness it heals.
Jacco Dieleman: Then follows the incantation which is always written in black Ink and then after the incantation follows the manual instruction: how to make a medication and how to apply to the body. And that again is written in red ink and so the alternate use of red and black ink makes it very easy to find your way in the manuscript.
Female Narrator: The scroll was made during the time period known as the New Kingdom, when there were extensive trade networks between ancient Near East peoples.
Jacco Dieleman: And through these trade networks it wasn't only trade flowing through the Eastern Mediterranean in and out of Egypt, but also techniques, ideas, texts languages.
Female Narrator: How does he know this? Because these spells are not only written in the local Egyptian language.
Jacco Dieleman: Several of them use incantations in a Northwest Semitic language, and two of them are in the Cretan language.
[Music ends]
