Amulet Atlas

materialsSilver

also: argentum · sterling

materialThe LevantRome and ItalyBritain and IrelandThe MaghrebNorth AmericaThe Himalaya and TibetIsraelSyriaItalyUnited KingdomUnited States of AmericaEgyptAlgeriaChina

A soft, white, very reflective metal that occurs native and is mostly recovered as a by-product of lead-zinc, copper and gold mining. It takes a high polish, it beats out into sheet thin enough to write on with a needle, and it blackens: silver sulfide forms wherever sulfur reaches it, which is why old silver charms in a drawer go dark. Pure silver is soft, so working silver is alloyed, usually with copper, and quoted per mille.

cited

Latin argentum, hence the chemical symbol Ag
Alchemists called silver luna and tied it to the moon; silver nitrate was known as lunar caustic on that account. cited

When

c. 630 BCE to now still carried cited

PeriodIron Age Judah to the present
How the date is knownexcavated — dug up in a dated context
NoteDated from the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls, late 7th to early 6th century BCE, excavated in 1979 and described by their excavators as amulets.

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.

What its carriers say it stops

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

The story

The oldest surviving text of the Hebrew Bible is an amulet, and it is silver. In 1979 two tiny silver scrolls came out of a Judahite burial chamber at Ketef Hinnom, southwest of Jerusalem's Old City, inscribed with portions of the Priestly Blessing from Numbers and apparently worn as amulets. They date to the late seventh or early sixth century BCE. Unrolling them without destroying them took three years, and they are now in the Israel Museum.

That is the metal's characteristic use: a sheet, incised with a needle, rolled up, and carried in a tube. Flat metal amulets of silver, gold, copper and lead were popular in late antiquity across Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Iran — rolled and placed in a metal container with loops for a cord, and covered with incantation formulae and the names of God, mostly in Aramaic and Hebrew. Jewish amulet practice, which will not make images, puts the divine name on parchment or on metal, and the metal is usually silver.

The metal also carries claims of its own. The hamsa was most commonly carved in jet or formed from silver, a metal held to represent purity and to hold power. The hirz, another Egyptian amulet against the evil eye, is a silver box holding verses of the Qur'an. The Neapolitan cimaruta is commonly silver, and the cornicello is cut from gold or silver as often as from coral; silver, in that reading, belongs to Luna. In Europe silver turns up as a weapon: folklore holds that a bullet cast from silver is the only thing effective against a werewolf or a witch, and the metal is also credited with detecting poison and easing passage into the realm of the fairies.

Inference — silver sits between gold and iron in every sense that matters to a charm. It survives in the ground where iron does not, and it costs less than gold, which is why so much of the world's amulet stock is silver — it is the most expensive metal an ordinary household will put on a child.

cited

Now

Still the default metal of the amulet trades from Morocco to Nepal. The silver jewellery now identified with the Navajo and other peoples of the American Southwest is dated by writers on turquoise to around 1880 and described as a modern development following European contact — a reminder that a material can be old and the craft made from it recent.

cited

What this is near

carried-byKetef Hinnom silver scrollstwo rolled sheets of this metal, and the oldest surviving text of the Hebrew Biblecarried-byKameathe written Jewish amulet, put on parchment or on metal, and the metal is usually this onecarried-byHamsacarved in jet or formed in silver, which its makers tie to puritycarried-byCimarutaa sprig of rue cast in silver — the herb made permanent by changing what it is made ofcarried-byCornicellocut from silver as readily as from coral, and in that reading silver belongs to Lunacarried-byHirza silver box with Qur'anic verses inside itparallelTakrutthe same technique at the other end of Asia: metal sheet, incised, rolled, worn on a cordcontrastGoldthe metal above it, and the one a household reaches for only when it cankinTurquoisethe stone silver is set with from Tibet to ArizonatraditionPractical Kabbalahthe tradition that made this metal a page

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

materialCimarutathe metal it is nearly always cast in, and the metal Naples associates with the moonmaterialHamsathe metal it is usually made of, named in the tradition for puritymaterialHirzthe metal it is nearly always made inmaterialKetef Hinnom silver scrollsthe metal that let a text this small survive two and a half thousand years in a tombmaterialMilagrothe metal that makes an expensive milagro, and the reason old ones were worth taking downmaterialMiraculous Medalthe metal of the costly version, and the one that makes an old medal worth keepingmaterialMjölnir pendantthe other common metal, and the one the ornamented hundred are nearly all made inmaterialTamathe metal of the costly version, and the reason a wall of these is worth somethingmaterialAgadez crossthe metal the smiths cast it in, and never hammermaterialPractical Kabbalahthe other page: metal thin enough to write on and durable enough that the oldest example survivesmaterialThe crescentthe metal the crescent is tied to through Luna in the alchemical schemematerialThe crossthe metal the Agadez smiths cast it in, by lost wax and never hammeredmaterialThe open palmthe metal the Maghreb casts it incontrastCopper and bronzethe grade above it — in a Han burial suit the wire says who you werekinGoldthe metal one step down, and the one most of the world's amulets are actually made ofcontrastIronthe other metal folklore arms against monsters, and the one that survives in the groundkinTurquoisethe metal it is nearly always set in, from Nishapur to ArizonamaterialJoseph Navehthe metal the rolled amulet strips are beaten from, and the reason their text survives at all

Where this came from

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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