Note 1062 — Chapter VII · APULEIUS OF MADAURA

Caps. 61-63. The following passages from E. A. W. Budge, Egyptian Magic (1899), perhaps furnish an explanation of the true purpose and character of Apuleius’s wooden figure: p. 84, “Under the heading of ‘Magical Figures’ must certainly be included the so-called Ptah-Seker-Ausar figure, which is usually made of wood; it is often solid, but is sometimes made hollow, and is usually let into a rectangular wooden stand which may be either solid or hollow.” To get the protection of Ptah, Seker, and Osiris, says Budge at p. 85, “a figure was fashioned in such a way as to include the chief characteristics of the forms of these gods, and was inserted in a rectangular wooden stand which was intended to represent the coffin or chest out of which the trinity Ptah-Seker-Ausar came forth. On the figure itself and on the sides of the stand were inscribed prayers....” Such a figure in a coffin might well be described by the accusers as the horrible form of a ghost or skeleton.