A Study on Spontaneity: Some Notes on the Divinatory Handbook P.Ryl. 28

P.Ryl. 28 is a miniature codex detailing forty-seven prognostications based on palmomancy, or divination by bodily twitches. In this paper, I provide the first full English translation of this document, as well as the argument that this piece was spontaneously written, with little to no regard for the wider palmomantic tradition or even any consideration for how it read as a text as a whole. I then look at what the idea of a 'fake' means in the study of ancient divination.