What M. J. Bennett (Langdon 1993, pp. 78–80) writes about Galen, for example, sanctions the use of incantations by Greek Geometric plate fibulae might be applicable to other doctors (Dickie 2001, p. 25, and passim). contemporary and later precious figured ornaments in the Other works invaluable for framing this discussion of amulets Greek-speaking world. Objects with complex imagery might and amber areThesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum, vol. 3, reflect “the ordering of the world (kosmos).… Considering that s.v. “magic rituals”; R. Gordon, “Innovation and Authority in kosmos meant ‘the universe,’ ‘order,’ ‘good behavior,’ as well Graeco-Egyptian Magic,” in Kykeon: Studies in Honour of H. S. as ‘a piece of jewelry,’ the fibula was not a mere fashion Versnel, ed. H. F. J. Horstmannshoff et al. (Leiden, Boston, and accessory, but rather a sophisticated ontological statement.” G. Cologne, 2002), pp. 69–112; S. Marchesini, “Magie in Etrurien in F. Pinney, Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece orientalisierender Zeit,” in Prayon and Röllig 2000, pp. 305–13; (Chicago, 2002), p. 53, with reference to Hesiod’s Theogony W. Rollig, “Aspekte zum Thema ‘Mythologie und Religion,’” in 581–84, writes: “The vocabulary of kosmos makes ample use of Prayon and Röllig 2000, pp. 302–4; Oxford Companion to words for splendor and light: lampein, phaeinos, aglaos, Classical Civilization, ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth sigaloeis.” The point is glamour in the form of radiance, light (Oxford and New York, 1998), s.v. “magic” (H. S. Versnel), p. emanating from shimmering cloth and gleaming metals. 441; P. Schäfer and H. G. Kippenberg, Envisioning Magic: A Agalmaoccupied distinct but related semantic areas in Greek, Princeton Seminar and Symposium (Princeton, 1997); Meyer and asKeesling 2003, p. 10, describes: “It could designate any Mirecki 1995; Pinch 1994, pp. 104–19; Andrews 1994; Wilkinson pleasing ornament, or a pleasing ornament dedicated to the 1994; Ritner 1993; Faraone 1992; Faraone 1991; and esp. gods. In the fifth century, Herodotus used agalma to refer Kotansky 1991; Gager 1992, pp. 218–42; H. Philipp, Mira et specifically to statues, the agalmata par excellence displayed in magica: Gemmen im Ägyptischen Museum der Staatlichen the sanctuaries of his time.” M. C. Stieber, The Poetics of Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin-Charlottenburg (Mainz, 1986); Appearance in the Attic Korai (Austin, TX, 2004), is illuminating as Bonner 1950; and S. Seligman, Die magischen Heil- und she probes agalma for the sculptures and their accoutrements Schutzmittel aus der unbelebten Natur mit besonderer in her discussion of the kore as an agalma for the goddess and Berücksichtung der Mittel gegen den bösen Blick: Ein Geschichte the korai as agalmata in and of themselves. She reminds us des Amulettwesens (Stuttgart, 1927). In Egypt, an amulet could that the term is used of real women in literature (Helen of Troy at the very least, as Andrews 1994, p. 6, summarizes, and Iphigenia in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon 7.41 and 208, afford some kind of magical protection, a concept confirmed respectively). by the fact that three of the four Egyptian words translate as 7. Andrews 1994, p. 6. The literature on amulets, amuletic “amulet,” namely mkt (meket), nht (nehet) and s3 (sa) come practice, magic, and ritual practice in the ancient world is vast. primarily from verbs meaning “to guard” or “to protect.” The The termmagicis used here in its broadest and most positive fourth, wd3 (wedja), has the same sound as the word sense. Although M. Dickie and others argue that magic did not meaning “well-being.” For the ancient Egyptian, amulets and exist as a separate category of thought in Greece before the jewelry [that] incorporate amuletic forms were an essential fifth century B.C., practices later subsumed under the term did, adornment, especially as part of the funerary equipment for especially the use of amulets. The use of amulets implies a the dead, but also in the costume of the living. Moreover, continuing relationship between the object and the wearer, many of the amulets and pieces of amuletic jewelry worn in continuing enactment, and the role of at least one kind of life for their magical properties could be taken to the tomb practitioner. Dickie 2001, p. 130, concludes that the existence for use in the life after death. Funerary amulets, however, and wide use of amulets in Rome by the Late Republic “leads and prescribed funerary jewelry which was purely amuletic in us back into a hidden world of experts in the rituals of the function, were made expressly for setting on the wrapped manufacture and application of amulets, not to speak of those mummy on the day of the burial to provide aid and who sold them.” Pliny uses three words to describe amber protection on the fraught journey to the Other world and items used in medicine, protection, and healing: amuletum, ease in the Afterlife. monile (for a necklace), and alligatum, when citing Callistratus. In the ancient Near East, the great variety of human problems Greek terms for amulet include periamma and periapta. handled by recourse to amulets is already well documented in Following Kotansky 1991, n. 5, I use amulet to encompass the the Early Dynastic period. See B. L. Goff, Symbols of Prehistoric modern English talisman and also phylaktērion. The Greek Mesopotamia(New Haven and London, 1963), esp. chap. 9, recipes in the Papyri Graecae Magicae use the latter term. “The Role of Amulets in Mesopotamian Ritual Texts,” pp. In early Greece, as elsewhere earlier in the Mediterranean 162–211. The role of magic as described in Assyro-Babylonian world, an amulet was applied in conjunction with an elite literature is relevant: magic was prescribed and overtly incantation, as Kotansky (ibid.) describes. Incantations practiced for the benefit of king, court, and important required the participation of skilled practitioners and receptive individuals; it was not marginal and clandestine; and only participants. Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, lists amulets and noxious witchcraft was forbidden and prosecuted. See E. incantations as among the techniques used to heal the sick, a Reiner, Astral Magic in Babylonia (Chicago, 1995). tradition that continued at least into the Late Antique period. 6 INTRODUCTION