Ancient Magic Amulets?

[ënagualí~ᏉLAᗪἇ ኔጡ።]

Ancient Magic Amulets?

Today's Ancient Artifacts video investigates ancient Mesopotamian amulets depicting rather monstrous beings. These objects are quite small, ranging from 1.5 to 5 cm (for reference, a US dime is about 1.8 cm across), and the four examples shown here were found at Ur mostly in the 1930-1932 seasons.

Two of the examples are around 3800 years old, the other two are around 2600 years old. I'm not excavating right now (though I should be in the field soon), so I'm talking about artifacts that were excavated a long time ago by using photos of the objects from their museums.

The main question for my video today is: Why did the ancient Mesopotamians depict a relatively hideous and legendarily evil creature on these amulets? Every object has a story.

The older the object, the harder it can be to understand that story. In every case, however, it is more than an object. It represents the effort of the people who made it, the use or uses it was put to, the beliefs of the people who used it, and the effects of the environment on it after it was abandoned. So it really has multiple stories.

Trying to understand these stories is the goal of archaeologists. Passing that understanding on to interested people, more than just debate with other archaeologists, should also be a goal. That's what I'm trying to do with these short videos on ancient artifacts.

[Ametrine -(MHZ)]

I Love the way he explains why we tend to call an object an Amulet and how he relates Humbaba with the tiny representation. 

Thank you Vlada. 

[ënagualí~ᏉLAᗪἇ ኔጡ።]

[Ametrine -(MHZ)]

:o)