amuletsMagical gem

also: Graeco-Egyptian magical gem · Abraxas stone · gnostic gem · magical intaglio

amuletAncient EgyptGreece and the AegeanRome and ItalyThe LevantEgypt Greece Italyconfidence mediumneeds checking

A cut stone between one and three centimetres across, engraved on both faces and often round the edge as well. One face carries a figure — most famously the cock-headed, serpent-legged anguipede named Abrasax, holding a shield and a whip. The other carries names and lines of letters, many of them in no known language. It was set in a ring or pierced and hung. The Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database, which catalogues them, describes gems "designed to bring their owners health, prosperity and love".

cited

When

chiefly 1st century BCE to 4th century CE cited

Period	Roman Imperial
How the date is known	art-historical — dated by style
Note	The Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database gives the span as chiefly between the 1st century BC and the 4th century AD.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Pendant
Made of	Agate and onyx · Carnelian · Lapis lazuli · Glass
Goes	At the neck · On a finger · In the grave
Made by	gem-cutters working to formulae that also circulate in the Greek magical papyri
It says	divine and angelic names — Abrasax, Iaō, Sabaōth, Adōnai, Michaēl, Gabriēl — alongside strings of letters in no identifiable language (Greek)
Length	30 mm
Note	The database gives the size as 1 to 3 centimetres; 30 mm is the top of that published range, not a measurement of any one stone. Materials are the classes named in the cited accounts; jasper and haematite, which are common in this corpus, have no key in the vocabulary yet.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

Illness — sickness in general, where no cause is named citedsaid by the Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database
designed to bring their owners health, prosperity and love
Poverty citedsaid by the same description, which names prosperity as one of the three things an owner wanted
Going unloved citedsaid by the same description, which names love as the third
Another person's sorcery citedsaid by the cited account of the stones, which reads many of them as amulets and instruments of magic, written in the same formulae as the papyri
Attracting custom, luck or love — the charm that pulls rather than blocks citedsaid by the Roman gem tradition generally: stones were paired with gods so the wearer took on the associated powers, rather than out of piety

The story

The name Abrasax, or Abraxas, appears on nearly all the legends on these gems, sometimes filling the whole face on its own. It turns up in the same breath as other names across the Greek magical papyri and on Greek metal curse tablets: "I conjure you by Iaō Sabaōth Adōnai Abrasax, and by the great god, Iaeō." E. A. Wallis Budge described the composite figure as a Pantheus, an All-God, "with the head of a cock (Phœbus) or of a lion (Ra or Mithras), the body of a man, and his legs are serpents which terminate in scorpions".

The stones were classed and re-classed for three centuries by collectors who wanted to know whose they were. Antiquarians sorted them into Abraxas proper, taken as Basilidian and Gnostic; Abraxastes, older forms adapted; and Abraxoïdes, unconnected to Basilides altogether. The cited account is blunt about where that got them: no attempt to identify the figures on existing gems with the personages of Gnostic mythology has succeeded, and Abrasax is the only term in the legends that is not already known from other religions.

What can be said is that the gems and the magic papyri reflect the same ideas, and that the papyri contain directions for making and using gems with similar figures and formulas — which is why, as the cited account puts it, it can scarcely be doubted that many of these stones are amulets and instruments of magic.

Inference — this is the atlas's clearest case of a corpus without a findspot. The Campbell Bonner database lists contributing institutions across fifteen countries and a string of galleries and auction houses; the whole corpus is estimated at around 5,600 pieces. The countries on this record are where the gems were made and used according to the cited accounts, not where they were dug up, because for most of them nobody recorded that.

cited

Where you can see one

Another collection — the Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database, run by the Collection of Classical Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, gathers gems from dozens of institutions across Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States and the Vatican

An accession number appears here only where it was read off a catalogue page that is linked. No link, no number.

What this is near

contrastCurse tabletthe same voces magicae, the same divine names, scratched on lead and aimed at a person instead of hung on one traditionGreek and Roman protective magicthe tradition, at its most literate and most expensive personCampbell Bonnerthe scholar the standing database of these stones is named for motifThe namethe sign most of these stones actually carry, once the figure is set aside motifThe word that reads both waysthe other class of written charm that works by the shape of the letters rather than their sense materialCarnelianone of the stones cut for this, and the one the later Islamic tradition singles out as the Prophet's descendantHoly rider pendantwhat this practice turns into once it is Christian: named demons, named angels, and a rider parallelIncantation bowlthe eastern cousin — the same late-antique habit of writing names to bind a power, in ink on clay rather than cut in stone termabracadabrathe word that came out of this world and outlived every deity named on these stones storyWho owns a charmthe long read; most of these gems reached museums through the trade, and their findspots went with the diggers

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

contrastCurse tabletthe same names and the same nonsense-words, cut in stone to protect a wearer instead of scratched in lead to harm a stranger — this record is that one inverted originHoly rider pendantthe practice this grew out of — named powers, named demons, cut small and worn parallelNavaratna ringthe Mediterranean parallel — a cut stone prescribed by a specialist and worn against a named harm partGreek and Roman protective magicthe literate and expensive end of it, cut in stone and written in names nobody can read carried-byThe nameAbraxas stones — the oldest surviving objects here that carry a name and little else carried-byThe lionwhere the lion head ends up in late antiquity, stacked with a cock's head and serpent legs on the same figure carried-byThe word that reads both waysAbraxas stones carry the word, and are the earliest objects it is found on carried-byThe serpentthe engraved stones that carry snakes, snake-legged figures and serpent-haired heads materialCarnelianthe Greek and Roman engraved gem, for which this stone's refusal to hold hot wax made it the seal-cutter's default kinGoldthe engraved stone that was set in gold when the owner could manage it contrastLeadthe protective side of the same late-antique workshop, cut in stone instead of scratched in lead kinCampbell Bonnerthe object class his 1950 book defined, named and made countable kinChristopher A. Faraonethe Roman-period object his 2018 book tracks the Greek amulet turning into kinE. A. Wallis Budgethe Gnostic and Graeco-Egyptian engraved stones his 1930 compendium gathered and illustrated alongside everything else termabracadabrawhere the word turns up cut in stone, on Abraxas stones worn as amulets termperiaptthe class of object Victorian writers were usually describing when they reached for this word termtalismanexactly the thing the 1630s English sense named: a figure cut in stone under stated observances carriesBudge's amulet platesthe Gnostic and Graeco-Egyptian stones that fill several of the plates

Where this came from

The Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database (CBd) — Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest read 2026-09-16
Talismans — About us — Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest — Collection of Classical Antiquities read 2026-09-16
Abraxas — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Amulet — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Curse tablet — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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