Sadigh Gallery: Ancient Egyptian Amulets

Amulets were made of almost every material available to the Ancient Egyptian. The finest were carved of stone: lapis lazuli, carnelian, turquoise, feldspar, serpentine and steatite. Metals were used, in addition, gold being the most valuable, but copper, bronze and iron also were prized. Wood and bone were sometimes used. Of all materials, however, the greatest number of amulets was made out of faience.

Some amulets that were purely protective derived their power by evoking the Gods. For instance, if you wore a cat amulet around your neck, you carried with you the protection of the cat Goddess, Bastet. Amulets worn by women to protect them during childbirth often showed the image of the frog Goddess, Heket, who was believed to protect the women in labor. Other protective amulets, not directly related to the Gods, got their power by sympathetic magic. If you wore an amulet in the shape of an Ankh, you would continue to live because you wore the hieroglyph for "life". There were also amulets especially for deceased. They were placed on the mummy to assure that it remained intact and powerful in the next world. These funerary amulets were usually similar to those worn by the living. By far, the most numerous of all amulets found in excavations is the Eye of Horus. This as the highly stylized eye of the falcon God Horus. According to myth, Horus fought his evil uncle Seth to avenge the death of his father Osiris. In the battle, Horus' eye was torn to pieces, but by magic, Thoth, God of writing, assembled the pieces. Each element of the Eye of Horus represented a different fraction.

Sadigh Gallery has a vast collection of authentic ancient Egyptian amulets available for sale. You can also visit our website [ Ссылка ] to get more information on ancient Egyptian artifacts.

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