Bonner, SMA – PDF, 14.

magician here and there could afford expensive working tools.³⁹ On the other hand, unscrupulous amulet makers undoubtedly scamped their work; they carved figures of deities that were barely recognizable, and some jumbled inscriptions are probably to be laid to their charge. Some stones puzzle the archaeologist because the lapidary was an impostor who cut designs and inscriptions at haphazard; and men and women bought such work because they were so gullible as to be satisfied, perhaps to be even more impressed, by the lack of meaning in figures and text.

Further evidence that many amulets required careful technical preparation is supplied by certain texts which mention a process of consecration (τελετή, ἀποτέλεσμα, καθιέρωσις) as necessary to give a stone its full efficacy. In some of these passages it would seem that the mere carving of an appropriate design and inscription constituted a τελετή which gave full effect to the powers latent in the unwrought stone. Thus in the treatise περὶ λίθων ascribed to Socrates and Dionysius we read of the jacinth (ὑάκινθος): γλύφεται ἐν τούτῳ τῷ λίθῳ Ποσειδῶν ἔχων δελφῖνα τῷ δεξιῷ ποδὶ καὶ τρίαιναν τῇ δεξιᾷ χειρί. τελέσας οὖν οὕτως ἔχε φορῶν τὸ δακτύλιον, καὶ ποιεῖ πάντα ὅσα ὁ σμάραγδος.⁴⁰

“On this stone Poseidon is to be engraved, holding a dolphin under his right foot and a trident in his right hand. After consecrating the ring in this way, keep it and wear it, and it will have all the powers possessed by the emerald.”

The text goes on to say that such a stone will save the wearer from shipwreck. Attention may be called to the fact that no inscription is required, and that the design of Poseidon resting his foot upon a dolphin and holding a trident in his hand is very like some gems that have been classed merely as ornaments or seals; consequently this passage confirms the view expressed above, that certain gems that bear no indication of a magical character may nevertheless have been worn as amulets. Other examples of a “consecration” that consists only in the cutting of a design, or a design with an inscription, are to be found in the Epitome of the Orphic Lithika.⁴¹

On the other hand, the magical papyri sometimes give directions for a ceremony of consecration, after the object has received its design and inscription, which involves some or all of the following preliminaries: sacrifice, libations, censing, recitation of special formulas (λόγοι), and previous purification and continence. So, for example, the iron plate inscribed with Homeric verses, and the “Ring of Hermes,” an emerald with a scarab cut on one side and a figure of Isis on the under side, the scarab to be pierced and strung on a golden wire.⁴² In the account of the πρᾶξις called the “Sword of Dardanus,” a special incense that seems to have been used in the consecration is spoken

³⁹ See R. Wünsch, Antikes Zaubergerät aus Pergamon (Jahrb. deutsch. arch. Inst., Ergänzungsheft, 6), 1905.

⁴⁰ Mély-Ruelle, Les Lapidaires de l'antiquité, II (Les Lapidaires grecs), 175.

⁴¹ Mély-Ruelle, op. cit., p. 162, 13, p. 168, 12.

⁴² PGM IV, 2145–2241; V, 213–300.

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