Spellbound: Charming the Snake & Scorpion

If Queen Cleopatra VII actually put to use a snake as an instrument of her suicide in 30 BCE, the Egyptian cobra would have been a wise choice on her part, so powerful is its venom. A rearing cobra with a dilated hood (uraeus) was also a potent symbol of royalty in ancient Egypt. Once having grasped the snake, the entertainer then applies pressure to a certain spot on the nape of its neck and, voilà, it mysteriously is rendered immobile (cataleptic) and completely innocuous. A nerve is evidently pinched and this enables the cunning charmer, to the astonishment of his gathered audience, to then brandish the serpent as though it were no more than a mere walking-stick. The glistening creature remains in this peculiar stiffened state until it is tossed to the ground.

The biblical narrative is paralleled in Egyptian literature by the episodic stories of magicians’ fantastic doings in the classic Middle Kingdom’s The Tale of King Cheops’ Court, said to have been told to this Dynasty IVmonarch, the builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza. One wonder related to his majesty is how a conjurer fashioned a crocodile of wax that turned into a menacing creature, and then dispatched an adulterer. In another, one parted the waters of a pleasure lake in order to retrieve a jewel into which it had accidentally fallen. Athird severed the head of an Egyptian goose and then, in a twinkling, reattached it to its body, and the bird stood up and waddled away.

Thus, the magical confrontation of Moses and Aaron between the Egyptian magicians is certainly in keeping within the general tenor of pharaonic literature. Nonetheless, since there is not a single, direct account in Egyptian sources, nor any pictorial indications for that matter, of snake or scorpion-charmers in action, we must search elsewhere for traces of exactly how they practiced their respective craft in antiquity.

The painful, and possibly life-threatening, venomous bites of serpents, as well as the stings of scorpions, were a tremendously worrisome part of the ancient Egyptian environment. They were hazardous to both the living and the dearly departed. There is a vast wealth of textual evidence which pertains to the protection against these noxious beasts. Already in the Pyramid Texts, a corpus of magical funerary utterances, carved on the walls in the burial chambers of pyramids during Dynasties V-VIII to safeguard the deceased monarch in the hereafter, included a host of charms to prevent snakebites. In the New Kingdom, the Book of the Dead likewise contained spells to prevent the departed from being injured by poisonous snakes in the beyond. Spell 33 of that work, for instance, states that, in order to drive off a serpent, the deceased owner of the papyrus is advised to recite the following: ‘Oh snake, take yourself off, for Geb protects me; get up, for you have eaten a mouse, which Re detests, and you have chewed the bones of a putrid cat.’

Detail of a wall painting from the tomb of Inherkha, showing the deceased tomb owner adoring a huge serpent, a vignette from Chapter 87 of The Book of the Dead

Serpents are also a recurring theme amid the bestiary of real and fabulous animals, hieroglyphs, and other benevolent demons engraved on apotropaic ivory wands or knives from the Middle Kingdom. Dangerous snakes are portrayed on these, being devoured or sliced into pieces. When used in conjunction with certain spells, these objects of everyday magic helped to ensure the safety of the nursery or a pregnant woman’s bedroom from harmful, venomous creatures, which could easily carry off a youngster or expectant mother. When placed in burials, these magical devices could apparently also offer similar protection for their possessors.

It would be a mistake to think that all snakes in ancient Egypt were viewed with disdain and fear, or as creatures of evil. Egyptian mythology features as many as thirty deities who were capable of appearing in the guise of a snake, a number of whom were venerated as beneficial and protective in nature and function, such as the serpent- goddesses Renenutet and Merseger. All of this results in a plurality of meanings from the pervasive snake imagery in Egyptian iconography.

Apotropaic wand or ‘magic knife’ fashioned from a curved Hippopotamus tusk, featuring a great bestiary of protective demons, real and imaginary animals and symbols, all of which could be summoned by spells to protect against evil, particularly to prevent snakes and scorpions from harming mothers and their new-born children. From Thebes, Late Middle Kingdom. The British Museum.

So, one must not be too quick in assuming the worst. It often takes a reading of the accompanying text to know, for certain, the precise significance which was intended. The evidence suggests that part of a professional magician’s equipment included a long serpent-shaped bronze wand, only a few of which have survived the ravages of time and man. These were likely to have been used in the performance of rituals to ward off evil and in curing the sick or injured. These conjurers also had to learn an extensive assortment of incantations to stave off rapacious snake attacks and treatment of their bites; entire papyri are devoted to this specialized subject.

In the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, there is a fascinating papyrus scroll, dating from Dynasty XXX or the early Ptolemaic Period, which is a veritable ancient Egyptian snake-charmer’s handbook (or a treatise on ophiology). It contains precise descriptions of over thirty serpents and their bites, their respective colours and lengths, their names, and the particular deity with whom they were closely associated. This is followed by the medico-magical remedies for snakebite which explains, case by case, the treatment of the wound by lancing, and the dressing of it, drugs to be prescribed, and even the chances for the patient’s recovery! The papyrus also originally included remedies for scorpion stings but, unfortunately, this section of the scroll is no longer extant.

In a world where far less than ten percent of the population could not read and write, the learned Egyptian magician was part of the small literate and educated élite of society, and served as a vital medical practitioner. In reality, these charmers’ anti-venom treatments were probably more in the realm of psychological assistance, aside from opening and bandaging the wound, to help sufferers cope with their critical afflictions.

Snake-charmer at the Theban temple of Medinet Habu.
Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Wilbour Library of Egyptology

Somewhat lower in social station were scorpion-charmers, who could also be trained physicians. These healers used magic to rid an area of these poisonous arachnids and were not uncommonly attached to desert expeditions to care for the ailments caused by scorpion stings encountered along the way. The most treacherous culprit was the yellow scorpion (Leiurus quinquestriatus), which continues to haunt the desert regions of Egypt. During the Ramesside Period, the detailed attendance records from the artisans’ village at Deir el-Medina, situated in the arid Theban necropolis, indicate that workmen were occasionally off the job due to medical reasons, having the misfortune of been stung by scorpions. Such were part of the hazards of these tomb-builders’ occupations.

In sum, while snake and scorpion-charmers unquestionably existed in Egypt millennia ago, there is a dearth of conclusive proof that they were of the same sort as those known in recent eras. Like their distant ancestors, accomplished modern-day charmers do, in fact, possess an uncanny knowledge of the behaviours of snakes and scorpions. They are also talented entertainers, who play on peoples’ simultaneous feelings of dread and intrigue of these ‘sinister’ beasts, rather than schooled healers, as in antiquity. Nevertheless, it still remains a very, very risky sort of business, and fatal attacks are not unheard of (below).

One can detect certain similarities in the techniques between the charmers of then and now. For example, both use incantations commanding the creatures to obey them, the liberal application of spittle, curses, and the invocation of the divine. On the other hand, numerous present-day charmers, who profess to have power over venomous beasts, are unscrupulous frauds. They ply their trade using a bag of cheap showman’s tricks, such as working with cobras which have had their fangs yanked out or with cruelly sewed up mouths, or performing with non-venomous species and scorpions with the tiny poisonous barb on their curved tails removed. The passing tourist is typically unaware of the sham being played out before them, all to the tune of a simple reed-pipe. Even some Egyptologists have fallen victim to a few of these inventive deceptions, and still romantically speak of these charmers’ secret powers, that hark back to the age of the pharaohs.

The mystique of this curious profession has yet to totally vanish from this ancient land. As recently as September 27th, 2000, the Reuters News Service reported that snake-charmers had been called in by a hospital in Upper Egypt to help it deal with a serious snake and scorpion infestation. The uninvited guests had been spotted in the Assiut University Hospital, during the course of renovation work. For all their efforts, experts were quick to note, however, that all the creatures the charmers had captured were of safe, non-venomous varieties.

Serpent imagery abounds on illustrated mythological papyri.

Beyond doubt, Egypt’s most celebrated snake-charmer in recent history was Sheikh Moussa, of whom much has been written. It was said of Moussa, that ‘in the empire of the snakes, he ruled as a king’ and that he regarded himself a genuine magician, and was immune to all venom. He would frequently attach himself to large tour parties in the winter months, during the early decades of the last century, claiming to smell serpents and scorpions about. The following is an engaging eye-witness adventure of him in practice.

It originally appeared in the newspaper The Egyptian Gazette as, ‘Moussa the Snake-charmer. The way he worked. Not altogether a Charlatan’, during the winter of 1923. It is represented here in its entirety. The feature did not include a byline, which is pity, as the writer seems to have wellinformed about his subject.

‘On Tuesday we announced in The Egyptian Gazette the death, from snakebite, of Sheikh Moussa of Luxor, the well-known snake-charmer. To-day [April 28th, 1937] we reproduce below an interesting article, contributed to this newspaper in the winter 1923, in which the writer describes the methods of Sheikh Moussa in detail and discusses the question of his power over snakes and scorpions.

‘Most visitors to Luxor know Moussa, the snake-charmer. But not every-body in Egypt has been to Luxor, and it is some time since description of Moussa’s methods has appeared in the local Press, so the following description may be of interest.

Moussa Mohamed el Hawi (the snakecharmer), is a native of Esna. Snakecharming, according to him, is in his blood, for his father and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, and countless generations before him, had and exercised the power which Moussa claims to enjoy over all things creeping.

Indeed, according to Moussa, a man who would catch snakes must come of a snake-catching family: snake-charmers are born and not made: the secret is one which can be handed down, but not taught. Moussa’s young son, according to his proud father, is a chip of the old block, and bids fair to be one day the head of all the Hawis.

‘There is a story, and the visitor to Luxor will hear it, that Moussa’s father, two of his brothers, and one of his sons all died of snakebite. This however, Moussa denies, stating that it was his grandfather only came to an untimely end in that manner, and that was through a slip of the tongue, when the old man had grown old, and perhaps a little careless. When handling a particularly large and vindictive cobra, grand-papa, when wishing to command the reptile to lie still, unfortunately gave him the order, in Arabic: ‘Eat me’ which the snake complied with, to the best of its ability. Si non e vero… So much for Moussa and his genealogy.

‘Having previously made arrangements for his attendance, we took him in our carriage to an open piece of waste land to the south-east of the Temple of Karnak. Here he descended from the vehicle, and he walked slowly forward, his nose in the wind, like a pointer’s, and his keen eyes closely inspecting the ground. On approaching a patch of date palms, surrounded by low mud walls, where, he said, there might be snakes or scorpions, Moussa offered to be searched to prove that there was nothing up his sleeves. The invitation, however, was declined, and we went on. Immediately afterwards, Moussa declared that he smelt some kind of reptile, and began a kind of droning incantation.

Come forth, in the name of the Sayed Suliman, come straight forth and do not turn, Bismillah", and so on, endlessly, much of it sheer nonsense, with no meaning to it. A few moments later, Moussa said: "Here is a scorpion", and, bending down to the bottom of one of the walls, scratched the sand a little, and a moment later held up a wriggling, light brown scorpion, about four inches from head to tip of tail. The reptile appeared to attempt to sting its captor several times, with no apparent result. Moussa placed the creature on the top of the wall, spat upon it and ordered it to remain motionless, which it did until placed in the snakecharmer’s bag.

Limestone scorpion stone of early to mid-XVIII dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.

‘The incantation was now resumed, much of it unintelligible, but largely a repetition of what had gone before, with occasional variations, such as, "I conjure you, by the Sheikh Ahmed Ibn Talig, to come out on a holiday." Two minutes later the snake-charmer stopped dead. "I smell a snake" and in a moment he was down on hands and knees feeling in recesses of the wall.

An instant later he had in his hands part of the body of a speckled brown snake, which appeared to resist capture with all its strength and which could only be drawn out with difficulty. Eventually it was extracted and proved to be a grasssnake of some kind, about 3ft. 6in. long. Moussa handled the reptile with great unconcern, although he declared it to be poisonous, a statement which a very elementary knowledge of reptiles was sufficient to discredit. Moussa also volunteered the interesting though scarcely accurate information that there are in Egypt 366 species of snakes, of which some hundred are poisonous. A work of reference on local reptilia would have told the snake-charmer that he had overstated the number of kinds of snakes by 345, and that, of the twenty- one kinds, only eight are poisonous, and but two, the horned viper [Cerastes cerastes] and the cobra, dangerously so. It was a little surprising that a man of Moussa’s high standing in the snakecharming hierarchy should commit himself to such obviously inaccurate statements.

‘Next followed a visit to an old rubbish heap, on approaching which Moussa declared that he smelt a very big and very poisonous snake. Sure enough, when he had climbed to the top, he was soon on the track of something or other and, after much incanting and digging into the rubbish with his stick, he unearthed a large horned viper, which appeared to be exceedingly vexed at being disturbed and which, making the horrid F-F-F-F sound which this type of snake produces, not, as some people suppose, with its mouth, but by coiling up and grating its scales against each other, struck out viciously every time its would-be captor attempted to seize it. Moussa was anxious to impress his audience with the extremely venomous character of this snake, and the very wary manner in which he tackled it, was the best confirmation of his words.

Eventually he had it by the neck and, opening its jaws, pressed its fangs through a part of his galabia – doubtless to eject the poison. This done, the charmer placed the snake around his neck, where it seemed to feel quite at home. On being placed on the ground again, however, the viper was once more very active and very vicious and stoutly resisted recapture. Despite its struggles it soon disappeared into the bag, along with the scorpion and the grass-snake.

‘It is interesting to note that the dozen or so people who afterwards saw this snake were unanimous in calling it a cobra, though it was a fine specimen of the horned viper, or cerastis, with a pair of well developed horns atop its head.’

The piece goes on to describe how Moussa captured more scorpions and snakes, including a grass-snake which had taken refuge in a drain-pipe at the Luxor Hotel which he extracted, tailfirst, from its hiding place. A small boy ‘who appeared from nowhere’ took charge of the basket of captives. The writer concluded that ‘Moussa certainly gives good value for his money, and he does catch snakes. In fact, he catches them almost too well, for, even in the middle of winter, when snakes are few and far between, Moussa never disappoints his tourist patrons.’ Moussa’s apparent immunity to snakebite and scorpion-stings was questioned inconclusively; as was the role of the small boy, who may have ‘placed [the creatures] there beforehand’. The writer suggested that Moussa’s ‘realtime’ and extremely valuable – and dangerous - job of snake-catcher in summer became a winter set-piece for visitors: ‘But, even if Moussa is mostly charlatan, he is a very clever and diverting charlatan, and a morning in his company is far from being wasted time.’

I’m extremely grateful to the Wilbour Library of Egyptology for assisting me in obtaining some of the material needed to write this feature. Figure on page 22 is reproduced from the Description de l’Egypte (Paris, 1809- 28). Figure on page 23 (right) is reproduced from G.M. Ebers, Egypt: Descriptive,Historical and Picturesque (London, 1879). Brooklyn Museum of Art, Libraries and Archives. Wilbour Library of Egyptology. Figure on page 24 is courtesy of the British Museum, London. All other photographs by are by Patrick Francis Houlihan.

‘If this article were of sufficient merit to warrant a dedication, it would be in commemoration of the eminent German Egyptologist Ludwig Keimer (1893-1957), a great authority on Egypt’s ancient fauna and flora, on this the 110th year of his birth, the ideal life-span for an ancient Egyptian’ 

PFH.

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