Hands, fists & faces

Ancient Egypt: the tradition

Amulets appear in Egyptian graves before writing, in the Badarian and Naqada cultures of the fifth and fourth millennia BCE, as shells, stones and simple animal shapes. With the Old Kingdom the repertoire grew into a systematic vocabulary of hieroglyph signs, gods and animals, and by the New Kingdom the Book of the Dead prescribed which amulet went where on the mummy. Mass production in faience from open moulds put them within reach of almost everyone. The Late and Ptolemaic periods (664–30 BCE) are the peak of variety, when a single mummy might carry dozens. The tradition outlived the pharaohs, feeding Graeco-Roman magical gems, Coptic Christianity and, through Phoenician traders, the whole Mediterranean. Flinders Petrie's 1914 catalogue counted 275 types.