Notes

  • Amulets are mostly classified according to the categories defined by Petrie and Andrews (Generalities, Refs. #1 and 2).
  • A number of amulets reported by Petrie, but not by Andrews (i.e. Greek charms, shells, etc.) are not described. They are of scientific interest for Egyptologists only.
  • All names of deities are from Wilkinson R H. The complete gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt, 2003, Thames & Hudson.
  • When several amulets are shown in a given slide, their actual size is approximately scaled except when indicated in red.
  • Every type of amulets is mostly presented by chronological order with up-dated referenced periods of production.
  • It is nowadays not acceptable to mostly rely on the seminal works of Petrie and Andrews. Their descriptions are based on the University College London (Petrie) or on the British Museum (Andrews) collections and are by far not exhaustive. The only more or less exhaustive collection could have been the Cairo Museum one. However:

(a) During the 19th century Western museums bought the Salt, Drovetti and other collections, which mostly consisted of directly or indirectly looted artefacts.

(b) Unique and exceptional amulets were donated to foreign museums according to the digging policy of the 20th century and of the beginning of the 21th century.Before Tutankhamun tomb’s discovery by Howard Carter in November 1922, finds were divided between the Cairo museum or the government of Sudan and the digging organization. There were major losses for Egypt and Sudan.

All major Egyptian museums (Le Louvre, The British Museum, Petrie Museum, The Metropolitan Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung Berlin, Roemer-Pelizaeus, Museo Egizio Torino, etc. got unique amulets that they are displaying nowadays.
In addition, plenty of rare unpublished amulets are not on view in these Museums.

 

  • Unpublished or barely published amulets are defined as not accessible to a general public audience.
  • This blog cannot be completed if I do not get the permission of owners of galleries and of collectors to reproduce many unpublished amulets I am aware of.I very much hope that I will get such permissions so that this survey is useful. Any contribution/addition will be acknowledged nominatively or anonymously. Amulets marked as ‘Private collection DA’ are in my mine.Thank you also in advance for signaling me any error or misinterpretation.

Principal Abbreviations used

Dimensions: (All dimensions are in cm)

  • L Length
  • H Height
  • W Width
  • D Depth or T Thickness
  • Ø Diameter
  • LACMA# Los Angeles County Museum of Art
  • LDUCE-UC# Petrie Museum (London)
  • MET# The Metropolitan Museum (NYC)
  • MFA# Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)
  • Penn Museum# University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Philadelphia)

Note:‘The Oriental Institute’ of the University of Chicago was renamed ‘The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa’ in 2023