Egyptian Amulets

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Subject: Egyptian Amulets Tue May 30 2006, 16:23

Essay number 5! And my longest one yet. I'll try to make them shorter but it is for the good of Ravenclaw!

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An amulet, talisman or charm is a personal ornament which, because of its shape, the material from which it is made, or even just its color, is believed to endow its wearer by magical means with certain powers or capabilities. At the very least it should afford some kind of magical protection, a concept confirmed by the fact that three of the four Egyptian words translated as 'amulet', namely mkt (meket), nht (nehet) and s3 (sa) come primarily from verbs meaning 'to guard' or 'to protect'. The fourth, wd3 (wedja), has the same sound as the word meaning 'well-being'. For the ancient Egyptians amulets and jewelry incorporating amuletic forms were an essential adornment, especially as part of the funerary equipment for the dead, but also in the costume of the living. Moreover, many of the amulets and pieces of amuletic jewelry worn in life for their magical properties could be taken to the tomb for use in the life after death. Funerary amulets, however, and prescribed funerary jewelry which was purely amuletic in function, were made expressly for setting on the wrapped mummy on the day of burial to provide aid and protection on the fraught journey to the Other World and ease in the Afterlife.

Ancient Egyptian texts give information on the appearance and uses of amulets. In particular, certain funerary amulets are the subject of chapters in the Book of the Dead, a repertoire of nearly 200 spells or chapters written on papyrus and illustrated with vignettes which were intended to help the dead pass through the perils of the Underworld and reach heaven. Indeed, Books of the Dead themselves qualify for the term funerary amulet since a copy was placed in the burial chamber either on the mummy itself, inside the coffin or within a special compartment in a Ptah-Sokaris-Osiris figure or in the plinth on which it stood. In funerary papyri the amulets in question are illustrated in the accompanying vignette, the material from which they are to be made is specified and the spell to be recited over them, together with the desired result, forms the relevant chapter.

Although Book of the Dead papyri do not predate the New Kingdom, many of their spells are first found in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts which were themselves largely based on the so-called Pyramid Texts inscribed inside Old Kingdom pyramids from the reign of Wenis onwards (c. 2350 BC). Some of the spells for prescribed amulets which occur in these earlier texts were not incorporated into the Book of the Dead, but examples of the amulets in question have themselves survived. Such is the case for that in the form of a lion's forepart prescribed by Coffin Text 83: examples of First Intermediate Period date are known.

A few of the spells in the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead were to be recited not over an actual amuletic form but over a representation drawn on the bandages which wrapped the mummy, thus rendering the bandaging itself amuletic. It was sometimes the practice, too, in magic-medical texts of the New Kingdom and later that the spell should be recited over various amuletic images painted or drawn on linen which was then set on the relevant part of the sufferer's body. Indeed, occasionally it was required that the drawing be made directly on to the patient's hand and subsequently licked off so that the potency of the image and the words pass into his body together. Most often, though, remedies involved the recitation of a spell over an actual amulet.

A well-known list of amulets is depicted on the thickness of a doorway in the complex of rooms dedicated to Osiris on the roof of the Ptolemaic temple of the goddess Hathor at Dendera. Far more informative, however, is the detailed contemporary list of amulets on the verso of a funerary papyrus, known as the MacGregor Papyrus, in which each is represented pictorially and named. Another source is a select group of amulets depicted on a wooden tablet of New Kingdom date in Berlin; of particular use is the listing of the materials from which they are made. Sometimes, too, Late Dynastic funerary papyri end with a depiction of dozens of amulets positioned in such a way that they can only reflect how they would have been placed on the mummy.

Undoubtedly the positioning of an amulet on the body must originally have had a special significance; certainly the location of the prescribed funerary amulets was always laid down. However, when mummies were first unwrapped, such information was not always recorded carefully or was even ignored. Now, though, the X-raying of wrapped bodies and re-examination of evidence are providing more and more details. Although the majority of mummies examined in this way date to the last millennium BC and in particular to the last few centuries BC, it has been possible to determine that from the New Kingdom until the Ptolemaic Period the positioning of amulets on the body does appear to follow a certain pattern and it was only after this time that they came to be scattered almost randomly.

Some rare examples of original stringing have survived which suggest that, in the First Intermediate Period at least, amulets were well spread out over a length of intricately twisted and knotted thread made from flax fibre. The tradition continued into the Roman Period, when some bodies wore over the chest a palm fibre frame twisted around with flax thread to hold well-spaced-out amulets in rows. However, in the case of many Egyptian amulets, threading holes or suspension loops were not necessary since funerary examples intended purely for the tomb could be laid on the mummy or within its wrappings.

The first recognizable amulets occur as early as the predynastic Badarian Period, which predates the beginning of the First Dynasty in 3100 BC by more than a thousand years. All of them were found in burials, yet it is evident that their magical properties were primarily intended to provide aid in life; it was only subsequently that they were taken to the grave. Although very limited in form and material, these earliest amulets give a good indication of the dangerous forces which the early Egyptians felt were present in their world and needed to be harnessed by magical means. In some instances, too, they mark the first appearance of types which were to continue in use throughout dynastic history. Hobbled hippopotamus shapes, sometimes just the heads alone, suggest that, as in historic times, the river horse was considered a creature of unpredictable moods, most of them malevolent. An amulet in its form, especially an incapacitated one, was presumably intended to act rendering harmless this most dangerous animal by means of its own tethered representation and thereby affording protection to its wearer.

Another equally early representational amulet appears to have the shape of an antelope's or gazelle's head. In historic times, in one context at least, this creature was considered an embodiment of evil. Consequently an amulet in its shape might have been intended to avert ill-will or malevolence. However, at such an early date perhaps it was only hoped that by a kind of sympathetic magic its wearer might be given the animal's fleetness of foot or at least rendered a great hunter of this desert creature. Other early amulets in the shape of an animal's head, such as that of a panther or lioness, a dog and a bull, may also have incorporated the idea of protection by aversion. Yet they too might just as well have been felt capable of endowing their wearer with the ferocity of the big cat, the fleetness or slyness of the wild dog and the savage strength and virility of the bull. A definitive interpretation of an amulet's function in any period is often difficult; in the preliterate Predynastic Period only speculation is possible.

Other recognizable amulets of predynastic date are the couchant jackal and the archaic-form crouched falcon, which in historic times would represent respectively the gods Anubis and Horus, both with protective capabilities. But how are early fly and hedgehog amulets to be interpreted? A final category of predynastic amulet is formed by natural objects such as birds' claws and shells of various types including the cowrie which, in particular, was to retain its amuletic significance until the end of pharaonic history. In dynastic times all such forms would come to be imitated in materials such as precious metal and semi-precious stones.

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I'm nuts - I know. I've said it many times - 5 essays - to stop or not to stop? THAT is the question lol.

Sources: Knowledge I hold, books I own and a lil website to help you out: http://realmagick.com/articles/06/2106.html

Subject: Re: Egyptian Amulets Thu Jun 01 2006, 05:57

You do realize that was well over 1000 words? Crazy - 50 points.

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