The magic of jewels and charms

Were there sufficient evidence as to the use of jade by the ancient Egyptians, we might be justified in finding an allusion to this substance in the 160th chapter of the Book of the Dead. This chapter was to be inscribed upon a small column made of a green stone (Renouf translates “green feldspar”), as appears in the text, which reads, in part, as follows:

The text is accompanied by a vignette in which Thoth is represented bringing the column enclosed in a box or casket. This is one of the forms of the neshem-stone, a name used in Egyptian as widely and vaguely as was smaragdus in Latin. One thing is, however, quite evident, the material designated here must have been of exceptional hardness and toughness, for the special virtue of the column-amulet was to make the body as hard and indestructible as itself. Incidentally we may recall that the hermetic work of Thoth, named by the later Greeks Trismegistos, the Thrice Mighty One, which was said to have been unearthed in a tomb, was inscribed upon smaragdus.

The larger part of the amulets used in ancient Egypt represented some living creature. The most usual type is the bull’s head, which was cut from carnelian, hematite, amazon stone, lapis lazuli, or quartz. Prehistoric Egyptian amulets representing the fly have been found; these were of slate, lapis lazuli and serpentine. In historic times gold was employed as the material. Other types occurring in prehistoric times are the hawk, of quartz or limestone; the serpent, of lapis lazuli or limestone; the crocodile and the frog. Carnelian was freely used as the material for amulets in the earlier historic times, among the prevailing forms were the hand, the fist, and the eye; amulets figuring the lion, the jackal-head, the frog, and the bee, also appear. Silver or electrum was substituted for carnelian in the Middle Kingdom. At a later period amulets were used less and less frequently.[569]

The mysterious virtues of the scarab are not yet forgotten in the East, in Syria at least, for we are told that this beetle is an object of much veneration among the Syrian peasants as an amulet. One use of it in this way is to enclose a specimen in a box and lay this upon the breast of a babe in its cradle as a sure protection against the greatly-dreaded Evil Eye. There is also a superstition in this region that if a “scarab” is found lying helplessly on its back, anyone who charitably relieves it of its embarrassment by setting it on its feet, will be relieved of the guilt of a number of sins.[570]

It is difficult to see any other origin for the scaraboid, or imperfect scarab form, than that afforded by the Egyptian scarabs, some of which date back to about 4000 B.C. Whether we can literally say that the scaraboid was introduced into Babylon by the Egyptians may be open to question, as the form itself appears to have been evolved by Etruscans and Greeks. Unquestionably the scaraboid was much more easily shaped than the scarab proper, and for those traders who wished large supplies for commercial purposes at a low cost, this was by no means a negligible quality.

The evolution of the ring from the cylindrical seal is of course purely a matter of conjecture. Here, as is often the case in a chain or series of fossil remains, we have a succession of types which may be connected with one another genetically, but which must not be so connected. That is to say, we cannot prove the affirmative and can only point to a probability.

Many cut and engraved stones, some of which had evidently been used as talismans, have been washed up on the shore at Alexandria, Egypt. Not all of these are completed, some being only half worked, as though the engraver had become dissatisfied with his design, or had found a flaw in the material, or that they had been lost from boats or ships. It has been conjectured that these half-completed gems were the work of household jewellers employed in the palaces of Alexandria.[571] In Mas’ûdi’s “Meadows of Gold” we read that in his time, in the tenth century A.D., there was what he terms “a fishery for precious stones” on the sea-coast near Alexandria, Egypt. To account for this he relates two bits of legend. One of them represents these fragments of precious stones as having originally adorned the richly decorated vases and vessels of Alexander the Great, which were broken up and cast into the sea by Alexander’s mother after his death. The other tale was to the effect that Alexander himself had gathered together a mass of jewels and ordered them to be thrown into the sea near the Pharos, so that its neighborhood should never be deserted; for, Mas’ûdi remarks, wherever precious stones are to be found, whether in mines or in the depths of the sea, men are sure to assemble to seek for them.[572]

The prophet Isaiah in his third chapter, where he scores the wantonness and vanity of the Daughters of Zion (vs. 16–26), enumerates in detail the various adornments of a Hebrew mondaine toward the end of the eighth century before Christ. Among the jewels and trinkets, amulets (lehâshîm; v. 20) are expressly mentioned, and also “crescents,” these being probably of gold. While it is not possible to determine the material of the amulets, the fact that they are named together with rich ornaments of various kinds, rings, nose-jewels, bracelets, anklets, etc., indicates that they were of precious material, and were possibly engraved precious stones or seals of some sort.[573] In the Song of Songs, which can scarcely be assigned to a later date than Isaiah, and may have been written earlier, the seal is named in what is perhaps the most beautiful passage of this unique poem, Chapter VII, verse 6:

The burying in a grave of valuable gems and ornaments worn by the deceased during life must have been originally due to a belief that they served as talismans to guard the remains from the malign influence of evil spirits, or perhaps even to afford protection and aid, by some strange occult power, to the soul of the departed in the under or upper world whither it had journeyed. In the New World, among the more highly civilized and wealthy Indian tribes of the south, this custom was very general, and rich spoils have been taken from their graves by the unsentimental settlers from Europe. In the Old World also this usage was quite common; Egyptian tombs have afforded jewels of gold and gems worth large sums intrinsically, apart from their archæological value, and only to note one among many instances, we may recall the treasures unearthed by the indefatigable Schliemann in the old Greek tombs of Mycenæ. However, of all these finds none surpasses in interest that made by M. Henry de Morgan near Susa on February 10, 1901, when there was brought to light, from a depth of some six metres below the surface, a bronze sarcophagus containing the skeleton of a woman. Heaped upon the breast of the skeleton and strewn about the head and neck was a mass of finely-wrought and artistic gems and jewels, including several detached amulets. From coins found in the burial and also from the general character of these relics, M. de Morgan believes that the interment must have been made at some date between 350 and 330 B.C., just before Alexander’s invasion of Persia.[574]

The jewels embrace a beautiful gold torque weighing 385 grams (something over one pound Troy). The hoop terminates in two lions’ heads having cheeks of turquoise, while on the muzzle is a lapis lazuli flanked by two turquoises; on the top of the head is a plate of mother-of-pearl. Bracelets similar in design and decoration to the torque go to complete the parure. Of even greater interest than the gold torque was a three-row pearl necklace, 238 of the pearls being still more or less well preserved; originally there must have been from 400 to 500 of them. Still another valuable necklace consists of 400 beads of precious or ornamental stone material and 400 gold beads. The stones represented are turquoise, lapis lazuli, emerald, agate, various jaspers, red and blond carnelian, feldspar, jade (?), hyaline and milky quartz, amethyst of a pale violet hue, hematite, several marbles and breccia. A fourth necklace had a row of beads and pendants incrusted with carnelian, lapis lazuli and turquoise; here the sharp contrast of the bright red carnelian disturbs the harmonious effect produced by the combination of the dark blue lapis lazuli and the light blue turquoise.

The detached amulets are of various forms, one figuring a sphinx with a ram’s head; this was in white paste with green enamel. Another, of gold, was rudely fashioned in the form of a lion or a cat, and there was also a dove of lapis lazuli, poorly executed, the amulets (mainly of Egyptian type) being of very inferior workmanship as compared with the jewels. Still they serve to confirm the belief that this heaping up in the tomb of all the dearest treasures cherished in life, was intended to exert a post-mortem influence upon the after-life of the dead woman.

That some of the Hebrew patriots who fought under the banner of Judas Maccabæus toward the middle of the second century B.C. were tinged with the prevailing superstition regarding amulets, appears in a passage of the second book of Maccabees, where it is stated that when Judas collected together for burial the bodies of those patriots who had fallen in battle before Odolla, they were found to have worn beneath their tunics certain idolatrous amulets, a custom strictly forbidden to the Jews. Their death was then looked upon as a signal instance of divine justice, which “had made hidden things manifest,” and Judas exhorted the people to take this lesson to heart and guard themselves from sin.

The wealth of books on magic and divination produced in the ancient city of Ephesus, in Asia Minor, was so great that the designation “Ephesian writings” was quite generally given to writings of this kind, more especially to denote short texts that could be worn as amulets or charms. We read in the Acts of the Apostles (xix, 19) that after hearing the fervent discourses of St. Paul, in which he eloquently attacked the superstitions of the Ephesians, many of those who owned books of this description were so deeply moved that they burned up all such books in their possession, to the value of 50,000 pieces of silver, that is to say $9000, equivalent perhaps to $90,000, if we make due allowance for the greater purchasing power of money nearly two thousand years ago. The small literary value of the writings of this sort that have been preserved for us indicates that the loss to posterity by this auto-da-fé was not very considerable, and yet many queer superstitions and strange usages of which we now lack information must have been noted in these magic rolls and sheets.

The first mention of the famous charm Abracadabra, which so often appears engraved on Gnostic gems, occurs in a Latin medical poem written by Serenus Sammonicus who lived in the third century and is said to have bequeathed his library consisting of sixty-two thousand volumes to the Emperor Gordian the Younger. The poem recommends this mystic word, or name, as a sovereign remedy for the “demitertian” fever, if it were written on a piece of paper and suspended by a linen thread from the neck of the patient. To have its full efficacy the word should be written as many times as there are letters in it, but taking away one letter each time, so that the inscription assumed the form of an inverted cone.[576]

It is interesting to note that De Foe, writing in the seventeenth century of the Great Plague in London (1665), alludes to this strange talisman as still in use.[577] Treating of the curious prophylactics employed at that time, he reproaches those who employed such methods, and acted “as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures, as particularly the word Abracadabra formed in triangle or pyramid, thus: