THE POLITICS OF MAGICAL CHARMS

While the ancient Egyptians produced a bewildering variety of magical charms in a wide variety of materials, some are far less common than others.  One of the rarest is the so-called “Pesesh-kef “ amulet.  There are only a half a dozen of these known and this new gift to the Carlos Museum may be the finest of all the examples.  

These tokens date from between the late Old Kingdom (ca. 2300 BC) to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2000 BC), a time when Egyptian religion was going through a radical shift.  Following the decline in status of the kings of the Old Kingdom, many royal customs and privileges that heretofore only the rulers enjoyed, were adopted by the common people.  This was particularly true in the realm of funerary beliefs with what has been called “the democratization of the afterlife.”  

One of the most important pieces of equipment used in the funerary temples of the pyramids was the pesesh-kef wand. This was a stone rod with a split curled end. They were often beautifully carved and found in sets with small vessels to be used in the important “opening of the mouth ceremony.”  The ceremony was intended to revivify the royal mummy as well as enable images, and even the name, of the deceased king or queen to act as homes for the departed spirit.   It is thought that this rite has very ancient roots and the form of the pesesh-kef relates to the ‘fishtail” lance head, a ritual object known from the graves of the early Predynastic period (ca. 4,000 BC)

The Carlos Museum example, like the other known amulets, has a human head at one end, and in our example, the wig worn can clearly be seen to be the nemes headdress another exclusively royal accoutrement that was adopted by the wider population in the Intermediate Period.

The amulet was probably worn on a string, placed on the neck of the mummy to insure its inclusion in the realm of the next world.