amuletsTamaτάμα

said TAH-ma, plural tamata

also: tamata · τάματα · Greek votive plaque · Orthodox votive

amuletGreece and the AegeanRome and ItalyThe BalkansDiasporaGreece Italy

A small metal plaque, base metal or precious, with an image embossed on it: a heart, an eye, a hand, a leg, a whole kneeling figure, a house, a baby, a ship. A ribbon runs through it. It gets hung on a pole or a hook beside the icon of a saint, and it is left there.

cited

Greek τάμα, plural τάματα — the vow itself, used for the metal thing that carries it
Same move as Spanish milagro, where the word for the miracle becomes the word for the tin leg pinned under the saint. The vow and the object share a name in both languages. cited

When

undated here; the John of Damascus hand is the earliest named instance; offered now still carried cited

Period	not dated by the sources read here
How the date is known	nobody here could date it
Note	The cited sources give no year for the practice. The silver hand attributed to John of Damascus and preserved at Hilandar is the earliest named instance they carry, and they give it no date either, so none is asserted. Greek votive offering as a general practice is described in the votive offering article from Olympia and Delphi onward, also without years attached to the tamata specifically.

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	Plaque or tablet
Made of	Silver · Gold · Copper and bronze
Goes	On a wall
Made by	metal stampers selling through Greek Orthodox religious-goods shops; no restriction on who may offer one
It says	usually none — the embossed image is the message
Colour	silver · gold
Retired	yes — it is replaced rather than kept
Note	The cited source says the plaques 'may be of base or precious metal' without naming which base metals, so tin and brass are not asserted here. single_use is true in the sense that a tama is offered once and left; it is not worn or renewed. No published measurement was read, so no length_mm is entered.

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 petitioners, who choose the shape to match the affliction
A heart may symbolize a prayer for love or a heart problem. Eyes may indicate an eye affliction, hands or legs may indicate maladies of the limbs.
Going unloved citedsaid by petitioners again, for the heart that means love rather than a heart condition — the cited source gives the two readings of the same shape side by side

The story

Go and stand in front of a much-visited Greek icon and you will not see the icon. You will see silver.

A tama is offered either as a reminder of what the petitioner needs or in thanks for a prayer already answered — the cited account puts both uses on the same object and does not separate them, and the offering is usually made with a prayer and sometimes with a votive candle lit beside it. The shape aims it. A heart may mean a heart condition or it may mean love. Eyes mean an eye affliction. Hands or legs mean maladies of the limbs.

The Spanish-speaking world's milagro is the same object and the atlas says so on that record. Here is what a reader standing on this page gets that the milagro page cannot give: the tama has a named origin story with a hand in it. John of Damascus, serving as vizier to the caliph al-Walid I, was falsely accused of treachery and had his hand cut off. Praying before an icon of the Theotokos, he found the hand restored. In thanks he had a silver replica of it made and fixed it to the icon. That icon, called Trojeručica — the Three-handed — is preserved at Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos, and it is the reason the story is not just a story: the object it describes is still on the wall.

Inference — the difference between the two traditions is where the metal goes, not what it means. A milagro hangs on a robe or a retablo in a Catholic church and also, sometimes, gets carried in a pocket for luck. A tama goes onto the icon, and the icon is not a picture of a saint in Orthodox practice but the place the saint is met. The plaque is therefore pinned to a person, in the tradition's own terms, rather than to a painting of one.

Tamata are not the only thing left. Orthodox Christians also offer candles, prosphora — the bread baked for the liturgy — wine, oil and incense, and many leave something of their own worth instead: jewellery, a pectoral cross, a military decoration. Inference — a medal a man was given for war, hung on an icon because a prayer was answered, is the most compressed object in this whole atlas.

They are bought in shops selling Greek Orthodox religious goods, and the practice runs beyond Greece: the cited account records tamata in Italy too, particularly in the south, where they stand next to the Catholic ex-voto trade rather than instead of it.

cited

How it is made and carried

Stamped or cast, pierced, threaded with a ribbon, and hung on a pole or a hook by the icon — the hanging done by the petitioner, with a prayer, sometimes with a candle. Nothing consecrates the plaque before it is offered; the offering is the act. They accumulate. What a church does with a wall of them after some years is not described by the sources read here, and this record does not guess.

cited

Now

Still sold in Greek Orthodox religious-goods shops and still hung on icons in Greece and in southern Italy, and wherever the Greek diaspora has built a church. No dated price was read for this record.

inference

Not to be confused with

Milagro — there is no reliable tell in the metal — the shapes and the thickness match. The tell is the wall: a tama hangs on a ribbon beside an Orthodox icon, a milagro is pinned to a Catholic saint's robe or a retablo

What this is near

parallelMilagrothe same object in Spanish — the cited accounts on both sides call them equivalents, and this is the one that goes on an icon rather than on a robe artThe ex-voto wallwhat a much-visited icon looks like after some hundreds of these have been hung on it kinLadankathe other Orthodox object in this atlas — that one is worn on the body, this one is given away artThe votive wallthe wall this ends up on, and the form the offering takes when there are enough of them materialSilverthe metal of the costly version, and the reason a wall of these is worth something motifThe eyeone of the shapes stamped on them, here meaning an eye that hurts rather than an eye that looks motifThe handthe shape with the oldest story attached to it — John of Damascus had a silver one made for the hand he said was restored practiceBlessing at a shrinethe act the object exists for, done by the petitioner and not by a priest placeMonastirakione Athens market where the religious-goods shops selling these are within a few streets

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

kinLadankathe other Orthodox object in this atlas, and the one that goes on the icon rather than on the body parallelMilagrothe Greek Orthodox object this one corresponds to almost exactly — same body parts, same thin metal, same icon parallelCatholic sacramentalsthe Orthodox counterpart, which does the giving-back in stamped metal parallelThe ex-voto wallthe Orthodox equivalent, which the Mexican milagro corresponds to almost exactly carriesThe votive wallthe metal plaque this wall is mostly made of in Greece and the Orthodox world

Where this came from

Tama (votive) — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Votive offering — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Ex-voto — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Milagro (votive) — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-17. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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