Mystery of Ancient Egyptian 'sex spell' unravelled by experts

While today's lonely hearts may try a new haircut or a fashion makeover in their attempt to woo the object of their desires, in Ancient Egypt things worked rather differently.

A recently deciphered papyri dating back to around 1,700 years ago reveals ancient spells that were used by besotted admirers in their efforts to find love.

One of the incantations calls upon the gnostic gods to "burn the heart" of a woman so that she may fall in love with the spell caster, said Franco Maltomini of the University of Udine in Italy. 

Another spell, which was to be used on a male target, promises the conjurer the ability to "subject" the recipient so that they will act on their command.

For both spells, all the spell-caster had to do was to insert the name of their love interest.

Other pieces, which were translated from Greek - a language widely used in Egypt at the time, offer remedies for headaches and more serious conditions like leprosy. One recipe instructs that a mix of honey and droppings from a bittern bird may be used to "promote pleasure."

The manuscript is one of a haul of hundreds discovered by archaeologists Bernard Grefnell and Arthur Hunt in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt over a century ago. Many of the items have only been deciphered recently, with a large portion of them how housed at the University of Oxford in England.

The work carried out by Maltomini and other academics who contributed to the analysis and translation of the texts will be published in a forthcoming volume of "The Oxyrhynchus Papyri," a series a books about the papyri of Oxyrhynchus.