Chapter Text
There were three basic elements required to perform magic in ancient egypt:
The spell - words held immense power in the days of the pharaohs. If you said something under the right conditions, it may come to pass. There wasn’t a special ‘language’ of magic, though. While modern wizarding lore has people spouting off bastardized latin, the Egyptians believed they could use their own language and the magic would flow because of what was done as they spoke the words.
The ritual - this is magic’s performative element. You couldn't just say some words, you had to do something, too. A lot of the time this meant drawing a circle because encircling was very important. For example, there was a spell to protect one being stung by scorpions as they slept. To make that spell work, it had to be said while you drew a circle around the person’s bed. Spellcraft could also involve items depending on what you were trying to do.
The magician - of course, not everyone could use magic. You had to be a special person to have power. For the most part, this meant being a priest (the coptic word for ‘magician’ even translates to ‘scribe of the house of life’), but there were exceptions to this rule.
So, to do magic, we need words, an act, and a person with magic. This is why the prologue has Atemu (the magician) draw two cartouches in a circle and place his puzzle between them (the ritual) as he says what he wants done (the spell).
Speaking of those cartouches, it’s worth mentioning that names were a big deal in Egypt. If you knew a person’s name, you could work magic on them. No name, no magic, and it couldn’t just be whatever the person went by. It had to be the name given to the person at birth, which was often kept secret. Because of this, many Egyptians had a common name and a secret name.
This is why the spell involved two cartouches. The first housed the name of the guardian (Atemu). The second housed the name of the enemy (Zorc) who would be sealed away with the guardian. Put it all together and you have our opening scene! There’s also context for the words Atemu speaks and there’s a reason I didn’t use a best-guess translation, but we’ll get to that later.
I suppose I should mention that the Egyptians used magic wands in their spellwork, but in my fic, those are replaced by the millennium items.