Bonner, SMA – PDF, 111.

The answer to that objection is that the protection expected from the stone may be against all enemies of the wearer, not a single one. This would accord with the use of a permanent material for the amulet in place of a piece of papyrus. It is true that the Memnon-Antipater amulet in the British Museum is carefully executed on a hard stone, and other stone amulets whose operation is limited to an individual object will be encountered in the course of these studies; but these are rare exceptions.

If the mutilated man on the Metropolitan amulet represents the fate that the wearer desires for all his enemies, a similar meaning may be attributed to a much-discussed gem in Athens, which was published by Delatte.³¹ It represents a strongly built man, naked, headless, his arms bound behind his back. The signs of virility are lacking, which may indicate another mutilation, though this is not certain.³² At the right, below, an unsheathed sword is fixed in the ground; at the left, in the field, there is a head of a horse or an ass. Preisendanz takes the scene to be the punishment of the wicked god Set, who is represented with the head of an ass.³³ The inscriptions contribute little to the interpretation. Όn the obverse is the one word βαχυχ, usually seen in a longer formula, χυχ βαχυχ βαχαχυχ, etc. There is no reason to connect it with Set; in fact, it is often found in connection with the lion-headed Horus. The reverse has the words αζαζ αραθ, which I have seen elsewhere only on the reverse of a Chnoubis stone in the Michigan collection (D. 101). The design can be explained without recourse to animal-headed demons such as Set. The mutilated man might be a chariot racer whose ruin is plotted by a rival. The equine head might represent the charioteer's favorite horse. The magical mutilation is indicated by the headless trunk of the man and the severed head of the horse. There would be scant room to show the animal's body on the gem. Natural as it is to think that the head in the field belongs to the trunk, nothing forces us to that interpretation of the stone, and the perverse psychology of those who made and used such amulets fits the one explanation as well as the other. Even if the figure is really Set, the design representing him as conquered and beheaded may have been used as a magical analogue to bring about similar destruction for all the wearer's enemies and rivals.

A carnelian in the Newell collection may belong to this group.³⁴ The stone is a long oval with the axis of the design in the shorter dimension. An ouroboros surrounds the field, his head at the middle of the upper side. Two rays project upward from his head, three downward from his lower jaw. Just below the snake's head is a poorly executed mummy, the head rather short and knoblike, the feet indicated by a slight forking at the bottom. Mummies of Osiris are frequently cut on amulet stones, and this may be an

³¹ Musée Belge, 18 (1914), 39; BCH 38 (1914), 189 ff.

³² That just such a mutilation might be represented for certain magical purposes appears from Cyran. I, K 20, p. 26 (ed. Mély-Ruelle): γλύψον ἄνθρωοπον ἀπόκοπον ἔχοντα περὶ τοὺς πόδας τὰ ἀἰδοῖα κείμενα κτλ. The recipe concerns the making of a charm with antaphrodisiac properties.

³³ Akephalos, pp. 76–77.

³⁴ D. 153.

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