"Magical" texts from Egypt in Coptic script and language are at the center of a research project at the University of Würzburg. They have now been collected and scientifically annotated for the first time in a 600-page book.

"These documents serve as an important source of information about popular religion—the reality, rather than the ideal, of religious practices and beliefs as they were lived and practiced in everyday life," explains Markéta Preininger Svobodova.

They thus provide today's readers with information about the experiences of people on the threshold of the transition from traditional Egyptian religion to Christianity and Islam, about their ideas of the human and divine world and about how human experiences such as happiness and success, suffering and illness, love and conflict were understood and negotiated. "These texts give us a direct insight into people's private lives at the time; they convey their true emotions," says the researcher.