signsThe knot

also: knot motif · tyet · knot of Isis · girdle of Isis · sacral knot · tied thread

signAncient EgyptGreece and the AegeanBritain and IrelandThe BalkansThe LevantJapanArabia and the GulfEgypt Greece Ireland Bulgaria North Macedonia Romania Moldova Israel Japan

A tie, either made in cloth and thread or copied in stone and metal. Two kinds sit under one heading: the knot that is actually tied — a red string on a wrist, a thousand stitches in a soldier's belt, rushes woven on a feast day — and the knot that is depicted, cut in jasper or drawn as a hieroglyph, with nothing to untie.

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When

c. 3100 BCE to now still carried cited

Period	First Dynasty Egypt to the present
How the date is known	excavated — dug up in a dated context
Note	Start from the First Dynasty tomb at Helwan excavated by Zaki Saad, using the conventional First Dynasty date; the article gives the dynasty, not a year. Tyet amulets in wrappings are separately dated to c. 1550 BCE onward.

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	Knot
Made of	Thread and cord · Cloth · Carnelian · Faience · Glass · Wood
Goes	At the neck · On the wrist · At the waist · In the grave · On the roof · Sewn into clothing
It says	Book of the Dead chapter 156 is recited over the Egyptian version
Colour	red · green · white
Retired	yes — it is replaced rather than kept
Note	single_use is true of the tied kinds — martenitsa and senninbari come off or wear out; the carved tyet does not.

What its carriers say it stops

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

Danger to the dead — charms put in a grave for the person in it citedsaid by Book of the Dead chapter 156, which calls for a red jasper tyet at the mummy's neck
the power of Isis will be the protection of [the mummy's] body
Illness — sickness in general, where no cause is named citedsaid by Bulgarian and Macedonian practice: the red and white threads are described as a wish for good health
War citedsaid by Japanese women who stitched senninbari for departing soldiers; the commonest slogan sewn in is bu-un chō-kyū, eternal good luck in war
Harm to a house or a field citedsaid by Irish practice — a Brigid's cross hung from the rafters for the saint's blessing and protection over the year
Another person's sorcery citedsaid by hadith reporting a charm worked against Muhammad, in one version undone only when the knot was taken apart

The story

Egypt gives the depicted knot its clearest case. The tyet resembles a knot of cloth and may have started as a bandage to absorb menstrual blood. An early example comes from a First Dynasty tomb at Helwan, excavated by Zaki Saad in the 1940s — old enough to predate the first written references to Isis, whom it was later tied to. From the early New Kingdom, roughly 1550 BCE, tyet amulets went into the wrappings, usually on the upper torso, and from then to the end of dynastic Egypt few people were buried without one. Chapter 156 of the Book of the Dead calls for a tyet of red jasper at the mummy's neck and says the power of Isis will protect the body and drive away whoever would commit a crime against it. Green faience examples were made too, the colour standing for renewed life. The tyet can be compared with the Minoan sacral knot at Knossos — a knot with a projecting loop — and the comparison is offered as a resemblance, not a descent.

The tied knot is a different object with a different working part: somebody's hands did it, at a named time, and it can be undone. Bulgarian and Macedonian martenitsi are twisted red and white yarn, given never bought, worn from 1 March and taken off at the sight of a stork or a blossoming tree — sometimes tied then onto a fruit tree. Romanian mărțișor uses the same two threads and is described by observers as funia anului, the year's rope, winding summer into winter. Irish Brigid's crosses are woven from straw or rushes on 1 February and hung in the rafters. Japanese senninbari carry a thousand knots, each made by a different woman, for a soldier going to war.

Undoing is part of the grammar. Islamic hadith describe a charm worked against Muhammad; in one variant he is cured only after the charm — a knot — is taken and taken apart. Inference — a knot is the one amulet form that carries its own cancellation in its shape, which is why so many traditions put a date on when it comes off.

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