Guardians of Eternity: Amulets in Ancient Egyptian Tombs

Walk through the Egyptian galleries of any major museum and you'll eventually find a case crowded with small, glittering objects beetles, eyes, knots, tiny gods no bigger than a thumbnail. These are amulets, and to the ancient Egyptians they were far more than decoration. Wrapped into the mummy's linen bandages or laid directly on the body, amulets were technology for the afterlife: compact, portable magic meant to protect, empower, and guide the dead through one of the most dangerous journeys imaginable.

What Was an Amulet, Exactly?

An amulet was any object believed to transfer a specific magical property to whoever carried or wore it. Amulets were used by the living for everyday protection against illness, childbirth complications, or bad luck but a whole specialized category existed purely for the dead. These funerary amulets were placed within the mummy wrappings, often in precise positions dictated by religious texts, to protect the body and soul on the perilous road through the underworld.

The Judgment of the Heart

Much of funerary amulet magic circles back to one terrifying moment: the Weighing of the Heart. Egyptians believed that after death, a person's heart was placed on a scale against the feather of Ma'at, the principle of truth and cosmic order. Only someone who had lived a righteous life was allowed to pass into the afterlife, and Egyptians feared a negative outcome enough to design special amulets to protect them against an unfavorable judgment.

The most important of these was the heart scarab, a large beetle-shaped amulet which was placed directly over the heart. Scarabs were supposed to protect the deceased from danger in the underworld and were sometimes inscribed with a spell instructing the heart not to testify against its owner during that crucial judgment. The symbolism of the beetle was derived from watching dung beetles roll their ball and associating it with what they perceived as the motion of the sun. It turned the beetle into a symbol of rebirth.

A Cast of Protective Symbols

But the heart scarab was not the only powerful symbol, Egyptian tombs held a whole vocabulary of protective shapes, each with its own job to do:

• The Eye of Horus (Wedjat) combined the features of a falcon, since Horus was linked to that bird, with a human eye, and stood for healing, wholeness, and royal protection.

• The Tyet, or Knot of Isis resembled the knotted girdle of the goddess Isis, who was thought to hold the power of resurrection. Funerary texts specify that it had to be carved from a blood-red stone and placed on the mummy's neck.

• The Djed pillar associated with the god Osiris, representing stability and the backbone of the resurrected body.

• Headrest amulets  miniature versions of the wooden headrests Egyptians used for sleeping.

• The Four Sons of Horus — a set of four amulets tied to the organs preserved in canopic jars. They were usually made of blue faience, pierced with holes so they could be sewn directly onto the mummy's cloth and placed across the upper torso.

Amulet shapes also shifted with fashion and belief over the centuries. Old Kingdom amulets featured animals; hawks, lions and hippopotami, during the First Intermediate Period amulets of body-part amulets became prevalent; hands and feet, arms, hearts, and eyes. The scarab made ints entrance during the Middle Kingdom and at the time of the New Kingdom tiny figurines of the gods were favoured like Bes, Isis, Anubis, Amun, Isis, Hathor, Taweret.

Materials Mattered as Much as Shape

For the Egyptians, what amulets were made of carried as much meaning as their form. They were made out of varying sorts of precious stones, that were sometimes found in or around and sometimes imported from far away, like turquoise, soapstone, carnelian or lapis.

• Gold was considered the best protector of the dead. In the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead', a set of ancient Egyptian spells discovered on papyrus scrolls, a sort of manual for funerary arangements in ancient Egypt, gold is mentioned in the context of amulets as the best choice for guarding a mummy through eternity, because it never tarnishes.

• Faience a bright blue-green glazed ceramic made from crushed quartz, symbolized life and renewal.

• Red stones like carnelian and jasper were used for amulets tied to blood, life's energy, and the protection of Isis.

• Dark, hard stones like obsidian and hematite were chosen for their toughness and blackness, since hardness symbolized endurance and the dark color evoked the Underworld itself.

Guidance from the Book of the Dead

Amulet use wasn't improvised it followed detailed instructions. One papyrus scroll of the Book of the Dead lists seventy-five funerary amulets with the prescribed material and where to place each one of them. Priests and embalmers followed these prescriptions closely, layering dozens of amulets into the wrappings of a single mummy, each one assigned to a specific part of the body and a specific danger it was meant to ward off.

Small Objects, Enormous Stakes

It's easy to look at these tiny carvings as jewelry, but for the Egyptians they were closer to insurance policies for the soul meticulously chosen in shape, material, and placement to see their owner safely through judgment and into eternal life. Four thousand years later, they remain some of the most intimate objects to survive from ancient Egypt: not grand temple reliefs or monumental statues, but small, personal tokens of hope, tucked into the wrappings of someone who wanted very badly to live forever. And sometimes they can be bought and re-used. It may protect the owner today.