A pioneering interdisciplinary study of the art, production and social functions of Late Antique ritual artefacts. Utilising case studies from the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri and the Heidelberg archive it establishes new approaches, provides a holistic understanding of the multi-sensory aspects of ritual practice, and explores the transmission of knowledge traditions across faiths.

Founded by Mani (c. AD 216-276), a Syrian visionary of Judaeo-Christian background who lived in Persian Mesopotamia, Manichaeism spread rapidly into the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries AD and became one of the most persecuted heresies under Christian Roman emperors. The religion established missionary cells in Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Rome and has in Augustine of Hippo the most famous of its converts. The study of the religion in the Roman Empire has benefited from discoveries of genuine Manichaean texts from Medinet Madi and from the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt, as well as successful decipherment of the Cologne Mani-Codex which gives an autobiography of the founder in Greek. This 2004 book is a single-volume collection of sources for this religion, and draws from material mostly unknown to English-speaking scholars and students, offers in translation genuine Manichaean texts from Greek, Latin and Coptic.

Founded by Mani (c. AD 216-276), a Syrian visionary of Judaeo-Christian background who lived in Persian Mesopotamia, Manichaeism spread rapidly into the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries AD and became one of the most persecuted heresies under Christian Roman emperors. The religion established missionary cells in Syria, Egypt, North Africa and Rome and has in Augustine of Hippo the most famous of its converts. The study of the religion in the Roman Empire has benefited from discoveries of genuine Manichaean texts from Medinet Madi and from the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt, as well as successful decipherment of the Cologne Mani-Codex which gives an autobiography of the founder in Greek. This 2004 book is a single-volume collection of sources for this religion, and draws from material mostly unknown to English-speaking scholars and students, offers in translation genuine Manichaean texts from Greek, Latin and Coptic.

Mani, a third-century preacher, healer and public sage from Sasanian Mesopotamia, lived at a pivotal time and place in the development of the major religions. He frequented the courts of the Persian Empire, debating with rivals from the Judaeo-Christian tradition, philosophers and gnostics, Zoroastrians from Iran and Buddhists from India. The community he founded spread from north Africa to south China and lasted for over a thousand years. Yet the genuine biography of its founder, his life and thought, was in good part lost until a series of spectacular discoveries have begun to transform our knowledge of Mani's crucial role in the spread of religious ideas and practices along the trade-routes of Eurasia. This book utilises the latest historical and textual research to examine how Mani was remembered by his followers, caricatured by his opponents, and has been invented and re-invented according to the vagaries of scholarly fashion.