Those who have seen the film The Illusionist, in GREEK Wizard Eisenheim, they probably remember the magic trick with the orange tree growing in a pot out of nowhere.
For the record, the Orange Tree Trick was created by watchmaker and magician Jean Eugene Robert Houdin and is a marvel of watchmaking, mechanical design and of course magical art, inspired around 1800 AD. Actually the trick started with the magician taking a ring and handkerchief from two random people in the audience, tying them together, making them disappear and then making an egg disappear into a lemon and the lemon into an orange. He turned them into a powder, mixed it with liquor, poured the mixture on a tree and the tree automatically grew into an orange tree with real fruit and from an orange he produced the ring and the handkerchief. The stunt was so famous that it is said that the Anthony Burgess inspired his book "The Clockwork Orange" from the magic trick of the same name.
Houdini and Copperfield may be famous and recent, but magic tricks are not so recent, which shows that people have always needed magic in their lives and way back in the past, long before Merlin.
The oldest magic trick belongs to Dedi, an Egyptian magician, who lived around 2700-2500 BC. and is said to have performed his tricks before Pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheopa.
In 1823, Henry Westcar discovered a papyrus under strange circumstances. When Westkar died, the German Egyptologist Carl Lepsius found the papyrus, which in hieroglyphs was titled "The Tale of the Court of Pharaoh Cheops". Despite the poor and fragile condition of the papyrus, the story was easy to read. So according to the story, the pharaoh had heard rumors of a sorcerer named Deddy from Jed Snefern, who gave prophecies and could resurrect decapitated animals. It is said that Deddy was over 100 years old and could eat 500 loaves of bread, the whole shoulder of beef and drink 100 jugs of beer a day. Deddy is also said to have trained a lion to follow him, with the leash dangling to the ground.
When Deddy appeared to Pharaoh, Pharaoh ordered a prisoner brought to him. Cheops ordered Deddy to behead the prisoner and bring him back to life, but Deddy convinced the pharaoh that this was not necessary. Instead he would use a goose. Deddy did decapitate the goose, placing the head in front of the audience standing to the east and the body to those standing in the west. Then he chanted a spell and immediately the goose's head began to bob and its body to move. Immediately afterwards he repeated the trick with a pelican and an ox which he resurrected. Commonly, Deddy's trick is reminiscent of the modern trick where a body in a box is "cut" and "re-glued" in front of the audience.
In the history of Ancient Egypt there are many legends about magicians and sorcerers who lived along the Nile and it is certain that even the priests of the time used various tricks to give prophecies and influence the Pharaoh. Deddy's story was fully deciphered and translated by the German Egyptologist Adolf Ehrmann in 1890, but without including the name of its author. And we may not know if Deddy is indeed a myth or a real historical figure, however his trick is the first recorded, has been around for 5,000 years and that in itself is legendary.
*Cover photo: life.com