Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)

ATTILA MÁRTON FARKAS: A Magical Plaque from Budapest

such. As for the figures of wild animals, they are explicable as symbols of the "dynamic forces of chaos". These animals meant not only the "dangerous evil power of wild animals", but in Egyptian culture in general or rather in the "Egyptian magical thought-system" they personify various kinds of evil things connected to animals such as poisons, accidents and diseases as well as demonic power. The turtle is a frequent image or symbolic form of Apep, the enemy of Re, who is the demon of darkness, annihilation, chaos and terror.

4 A good example for this symbolism is a magical stela published by Ph. Derchain.

5 In the stela Sakhmet is sitting with an vWs-sceptre in the hand. Behind her the god Seth is depicted as a bound prisoner in "the place of the destruction ". Below him, there are a lizard and a turtle. The text speaks about Sekhmet slaughtering and incinerating the Enemies of the Sound Eye - a typical hostile spell. Since our object has surprisingly few parallels, we can only speculate about their function and method of use. These objects might be considered as a special kind of Egyptian amulet, but this is fairly doubtful. They do not appear in works dealing with Egyptian amulets.'

1 Daressy in his publication referred to his magical plaque as a "talisman".

7 If these limestone plaques were real amulets or talismans, this implies that they were carried by their owners in order to get some magical benefits from them. But we must ask the question: What kind of benefits? The majority of Egyptian amulets have a function as "concepts". For example the vWd-amulet having a papyrus column form performed the concept of "flourishing"." But what kind of concept did these limestone plaques have? The purpose of plaques as "amulets" might have been for protection against enemies, since such protective amulets are known.

4 According to Jordan the cursing tablets or "defixiones" from the Roman world buried in tombs might have served the owner of the tomb as amulets.

10 If the plaques were talismans, they J See Wildimg, Feindsymbolik. LÀ II. cols. 146-4S. 5 Ph. Derchain, Apropos d'une stèle magique du Musée Kestner, RdE 16 (1964), pp. 19-23. 6 Among others sec C Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets Chiefly Graeco-Egyptian, Ann Arbor 1950, or W. M. Fl. Petrie's classic study: Amulets, Warminster 1972. (reprint of London 1914.) Daressy, op.cit. (note 2). ' See Ritner, op. cit. (note I), p. 51. 9 G. Vittmann, Ein Amulet aus der Spätzeit zum Schutz gegen Feinde, ZÄS 111 (1984), pp. 164-70. 10 D. R. Jordan, A curse Tablet from a Well in the Athenian Agora, ZPE 19 (1975), pp. 245-48 and D. R. Jordan. The Inscribed Ciold Tablet from the Vigna Codini. AJ A 89 (1985), pp. 165-67. Contrasted with Jordan, Ritner assumed that the defixiones belonged not to the tomb owner, but they were deposited well after the original burials by living persons. Ritner, op. cit. (note I), p. 179. n. 832.