Bonner, SMA – PDF, 205.

two other solar words, lailam and semesilamps.¹¹¹ Another in the same collection, bearing the cock-headed god on its obverse, has in the field the words Marmarouoth Abrasax and the Harponchnouphi formula (incomplete); on the reverse is the χαβραχ formula, with the number value 9999, which is rarely found except on Harpocrates amulets.¹¹² Here, then, as in the previous example, the formula is assigned to solar deities.

Its special connection with Agathos Daimon is clearer in two other examples. A chrysolite in the Ruthven collection has on its reverse side a crowned snake, evidently an Agathodaimon serpent, surrounded with a long inscription of which the Iaeo palindrome and the Harponchnouphi formula make up the greater part.¹¹³ The obverse of this stone shows Isis standing in a shrine, which suggests that the serpent of the reverse side might better be called Agathe Tyche or Thermuthis, the female counterpart of Agathos Daimon. A haematite in the University Museum shows the formula, in part, round a deity who has, in place of a human head, the head and neck of an ibis and a crowned serpent;¹¹⁴ reverse, the Iaeo palindrome, the name Chnoubis, and the words πεσε πεσε (l. πέσσε), “digest” — proof that the stone was used as an amulet for ailments of the stomach. The obverse may be interpreted as a fusion of Thoth with Agathos Daimon, a combination that occurs also in the inscription Θαυτ Ψαε on the reverse of an amulet in the Borgia collection, which has on the obverse an ibis (emblem of Thoth) holding a caduceus under its wing and bearing on its head a tiny figure of Harpocrates.¹¹⁵ Θαυτ Ψαε reproduces a dialectal form of Coptic, “Thoth Fortune” or “Thoth Agathodaimon.”¹¹⁶

Ιαρβαθαγραμνηφιβαωχνημεω. Passages in a Berlin papyrus prove that this formula is especially proper for invocations of the sun,¹¹⁷ and on a Michigan amulet it encircles a solar design, a scarab between two Horus hawks.¹¹⁸ This suggests that there must be a solar element in a strange design repeated with trivial variations on four specimens, three of which belong to the Southesk collection, the fourth to the British Museum, all inscribed with the Iarbatha formula.¹¹⁹ It represents a winged frog on the back of a monster made up of the body and legs of a crocodile and other parts belonging to serpent and eagle. The frog, as Lord Southesk remarks in his description of the type, is a symbol of renewed life or resurrection; as such it was sometimes used by Christians of Egypt.¹²⁰ The fact that in one of the four specimens

¹¹¹ B. M. 56257.

¹¹² B. M. 56449.

¹¹³ D. 23.

¹¹⁴ D. 264.

¹¹⁵ Museo Borgiano, p. 456, 11.

¹¹⁶ See Crum, Coptic Dictionary, p. 462 a, p. 544 a–b.

¹¹⁷ PGM I, 142, 194–195.

¹¹⁸ D. 210. The formula is recorded by Capello, Prodromus Iconicus, No. 130, on the reverse of a pantheos, which is probably to be classed with the solar designs.

¹¹⁹ Southesk N 78–80, B. M. 43056. This design may also be represented by an example in the Cabinet des Médailles, where I suspect that Chabouillet's description of his No. 2173 needs correction.

¹²⁰ See Hopfner, Tierkult, pp. 149ff. (Denkschr. Wien. Akad., 57).

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