The Diachronic Variations of a Formulaic Expression for Denying and Shifting the Responsibility and the Magical Processes of Thought it Involves – „c’est pas moi … c’est l’autre“

• Autores: Pascal Vernus
• Localización: Zeitschrift für Ägyptische sprache und altertumskunde, ISSN 0044-216X, Vol. 150, Nº. 1, 2023, págs. 130-145
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Study of a formulaic expression for disclaiming the responsibility of a statement or an action, and for shift-ing it to another. The expression is basically built on pairing a negative cleft sentence implementing n ... js with its pos-itive correlate. In magical context, it is used most often, but not exclusively, for setting up a blackmail: if the patient is not healed, the order of the world or the Osiris cultic man-ifestations are threatened to be disturbed. Via the formula, the magician exonerates himself from having uttered the threats and shift the responsibility thereof either to an evil doer so that he might receive the punishment bound to such a sacrilege, or to a deity so that the threats might rely on a more efficient guarantee.The expression being attested from the Pyramid Texts until the demotic magic literature, its diachronic variations illus-trate how copyists and/or redactors were submitted to the pressure of the past models attractor, on the one hand, and the pressure of the current stage of language attractor, on the other hand. Hence two main traditions in the transmis-sion: an evolutive one which tends to adapt the formula to the current stages of Egyptian (absence of js, operator m or ø) and a conservative one which brings about a revival of the most ancient grammatical features at a time they were obsolete