Magic and Amulets in Ancient Egypt

The blog post for this week is written by Linda Kimmel, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the United States. When she retired from full-time work as a data research manager in late 2020, she began studying about the ancient world, and serving as a docent at the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Linda had never heard of the Egypt Centre before the pandemic but has taken every course offered since she first noticed a tweet about the Centre in the fall of 2020 and hopes to visit Swansea in late 2022 or 2023.

The latest Egypt Centre course, The Funerary Artefacts of the Ancient Egyptians has been a fascinating look at all things related to burials in ancient Egypt. In our fourth session, Ken Griffin focused on Magic and Ritual. We learned that magic—the rough translation for the Egyptian word heka—played an important role in ancient Egypt, both in life and in the afterlife.  Heka was a creative power possessed by the gods and the pharaohs. But when ordinary people died, they could also have access to heka. The Egyptians even had a deity called Heka, who is commonly represented as a child at Esna (fig. 1). The two hours flew by as Ken discussed such topics as magic wands, magic bricks, the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, Ptah-Sokar-Osiris figures, the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead. But my favorite part was the discussion of amulets, and that is what I will focus on here.

Fig. 1: Heka the Child at Esna

Like many museum visitors, I used to be attracted to large artifacts; coffins, large statues, reliefs, and the like. But over the last two years, after attending hundreds of online lectures, classes, and training sessions, I have learned about the wonders of the tiny artifacts that are too often overlooked by museum visitors. In particular, I have become fascinated by amulets. Amulets are items worn to protect their wearer through their religious associations, or as Ken noted, a type of “religious equivalent to armor”. Amulets for daily life and the afterlife were common in all periods of Egyptian history. For the afterlife, amulets could be inserted within the mummy wrappings, or simply placed above the mummy. An inscription from the Temple of Dendera lists 104 amulets that could be set within the wrappings (fig. 2).

Fig. 2: A list of amulets at Dendera

The Egyptians had at least four different words for amulets, all related to meanings such as “to guard,” “to protect,” and “well-being.” Based on the work of Carol Andrews, we covered five different types of amulets: (1) deities and sacred animals; (2) protection; (3) assimilation; (4) power; and (5) possession/property.

Amulets of deities and sacred animals. With over 1,000 deities in ancient Egypt, not all were represented in amuletic form. Amulets of deities were worn primarily to evoke the protection of the deity, or to gain access to a power of the deity. While most of the deities represented in amulets are easy for us to identify, some are much more difficult. The problem is, there were only so many animals to go around for all the many gods and goddesses. Thus, any given animal could be represented in animal form by numerous deities. For example, we can tell that the amulet at the Egypt Centre shown in Figure 3 has the head of a lioness. The deities Sekhmet, Tefnut, Mehyt, Pakhet, Bastet, Wadjet, and others all had the head of a lioness, making this amulet impossible to identify. Without an inscription, we cannot be certain which goddess is represented. Many of the animal amulets we saw—such as the baboon, sow, crocodile, and cat—are also associated with gods or goddesses.

Fig. 3: Lioness-headed amulet

Amulets of protection. These amulets were worn to offer the wearer protection and good luck both in life and death. This is a large group, and includes the most popular of all amulets, the scarab. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of scarab amulets were produced throughout Egyptian history. The scarab beetle was a symbol of resurrection for the ancient Egyptians (fig. 4). This group of amulets also includes one I had never heard of before, the Girdle of Isis (Tyet). It was believed that this amulet, through the power of Isis, would protect the deceased (fig. 5). I have since discovered the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum has one of these amulets, and plan to use it in one of my next virtual tours.

Fig. 4: Heart scarab of Padiamun

Fig. 5: The "girdle of Isis"

Amulets of assimilation. This group includes the earliest forms of amulets, which represent parts of human or animal bodies. These amulets were thought to give the wearer the powers represented by the body part, or at times, the entire animal. They could also serve as substitutes in case the body part was destroyed. We saw examples of a spare hand, a foot, a face, and other body parts. Most important, was the heart amulet. The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart stored a person’s thoughts, feelings, actions, and memories. Heart amulets like the one in Figure 6 from the Egypt Centre were placed on the neck, breast, or upper torso of the deceased to ensure that they had a heart, should theirs be destroyed.

Fig. 6: Heart amulet

Amulets of power. There are many symbols of royal authority and power in ancient Egypt, including the djed-pillar, the uraeus serpent, and the red crown. This group of amulets includes those symbols. It has been suggested that the appearance of these amulets represents the democratization of funerary religion in Egypt; what was once exclusively for royalty, was now available for everyone (fig. 7).

Fig. 7: Djed-pillar amulet

Amulets of possession and property. These amulets represent all the possessions used during life that would be needed in the tomb for the Afterlife. It did not matter how small they were, they would still serve as representations of the real thing. We saw amulets representing such possessions as a writing tablet, tiny vessels, and a fish. The situla amulet in Figure 8 was a new form to me. It was used in ritual practices in temples, with the liquid in it having healing properties. The amuletic version of the situla was placed at the deceased’s throat and was assumed to have the same powers.

Fig. 8: Model situla amulet

This class left me wanting to learn more about magic in ancient Egypt. I could easily imagine a full course devoted to the topic. Fortunately, as always, Ken sent us a series of articles that we can read for more information. I intend to start digging into that literature as soon as the course is over!

 

Bibliography:

Andrews, Carol 1994. Amulets of ancient Egypt. London: The British Museum Press.

Colazilli, Alessandra 2012. Reproducing human limbs: prosthesis, amulets and votive objects in ancient Egypt. Res Antiquitatis: Journal of Ancient History 3, 147–174.

Germond, Philippe 2005. The symbolic world of Egyptian amulets: from the Jacques-Édouard Berger collection. Photographs by Truus Salomon de Jong and Philippe Salomon de Jong. Milano: 5 Continents.

Győry, Hedvig 2001. The history of early amulets. Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 28, 99–110.

Hays, Harold M. 2011. The death of the democratisation of the afterlife. In Strudwick, Nigel and Helen Strudwick (eds), Old Kingdom, new perspectives: Egyptian art and archaeology 2750–2150 BC, 115–130. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Pinch, Geraldine 2006. Magic in ancient Egypt, 2nd ed. London: British Museum Press.

Priskin, Gyula 2021. The 104 amulets of Osiris at Dendera. In Franci, Massimiliano, Salima Ikram, and Irene Morfini (eds), Rethinking Osiris: proceedings of the international conference, Florence, Italy 26–27 March 2019, 147–152. Roma: Arbor Sapientiae.

Smith, Mark 2009. Democratization of the afterlife. Edited by Jacco Dieleman and Willeke Wendrich. UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009 (June).

Sousa, Rogério 2011. The heart of wisdom: studies on the heart amulet in ancient Egypt. BAR International Series 2211. Oxford: Archaeopress.