I want to take you back to ancient times to a place where history, magic, and folklore
made one incredible story. I want to tell you about the first magician in recorded history,
Dedi. The time, around 2600 BC and the place, the palace of the Paroah Khufu,
although he is most known for having the Greek name Cheops.
It was Prince Djedefhor who told his father, the great King Khufu, of the famous
magician. He told his father that magician was ancient, over 110 years old who fed
every day on 500 creed loaves, beef shoulders, and 100 beer jars. Already, the story
indicates that this is a superhuman being. The tale goes on to tell how Prince Djedefhor
sought out the magician and traveled to his village, known as Djed-Sneferu. Dedi was
honored that the prince would come and that Khufu asked for an audience with the
magician.
When the magician arrived at the palace of the King, Khufu himself greeted him and
asked if there was truth to his magical powers. The greatest of all the feats that Dedi
was known for was that of decapitating an animal and then putting the head back on,
and the magician was prepared to do such a miracle for his king. Khufu demanded a
prisoner be sent from the nearby dungeon to the palace so he could see this miraculous
version of torn and restore. When Dedi heard that a prisoner was being taken to the
palace, he refused to do the miracle but instead asked the king to have mercy on the
prisoner and requested he be brought three animals. According to the story, it was a
goose, a bull, and some kind of waterbird.
Dedi grabbed the goose and pulled the head off the animal and then put it right back
on and the animal was unharmed. It is said he did the same with the other beasts as
well. The king was in awe and threw a feast for the magician and for a time Dedi lived at
the palace of one of the greatest pharaohs of all time. And from that time on, Dedi
became known as the first magician ever recorded.
This story comes to us from an ancient papyrus manuscript, the Westcar Papyrus,
which resides in Berlin. The ancient papyrus was discovered by an amateur
Egyptologist Henry Westcar and was a mystery until German Egyptologist Adolf Erman
translated it in 1885–1890. There is uncertainty about Westcar taking possession of the
scroll, and it made its way through several owners until it ended up in Berlin. How do I
feel about the veracity of the papyrus? I read a lot about the scroll, and I concur with the
experts, that this work was meant to be folklore from the beginning. Like a very good
magic trick itself, it has a lot of truth, and one or two stretchings of that truth, to bring us
a magnificent story.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of seeing my friend, David Parr, tell the story
of Dedi by way of a magical effect using a sheet of paper, it was spellbinding. I asked
David if I could post his YouTube video of his performance, and he wonderfully agreed.