The Toledo Museum of Art is hosting “Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World,” an exhibition tracing fifteen centuries of magical practice from ancient Egypt through the height of the Roman Empire. Running through July 5 at the museum’s Glass Pavilion, the show occupies a compact black-box gallery space subdivided into four darkened chambers designed to evoke the clandestine nature of ancient magical rites.

The exhibition opens with ancient Egyptian magical traditions, where the practice known as heka operated as a state-sanctioned extension of official religion. Clay figurines inscribed with curses against rival nations and papyrus strips bearing personal spells illustrate how magic served both institutional and individual purposes. A section on Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia features a cuneiform tablet documenting the Maqlú, an annual exorcism ceremony performed by priests to counter harmful witchcraft, alongside artifacts reflecting the gender dynamics of the period, in which state priests were portrayed as male while feared practitioners of forbidden magic were characterized as female.

Greek and Roman traditions round out the exhibition. The Greeks largely viewed magic as fraudulent or morally suspect, a skepticism illustrated through pottery vessels depicting mythological figures such as Circe and Medea. Rome, by contrast, absorbed magical practices from across its conquered territories, particularly from cosmopolitan Alexandria, giving rise to a proliferation of novel spells, amulets, and texts. The exhibition was curated by Jeffrey Spier with assistance from Gina Konstantopoulos and Foy Scalf, with exhibition design by Jessi Mueller. The Toledo Museum of Art is located at 2445 Monroe Street, Toledo.

Source: NewCity Art