Talismans of the Mediterranean and the Near East
Blue glass eyes, silver hands, coral horns and red threads: a crossroads of peoples and faiths where talismans are still part of everyday life.
Around the Mediterranean and across the Near East, talismans belong to everyday life. Blue glass eyes hang from car mirrors, silver hands guard front doors and red threads circle wrists, continuing customs that reach back to antiquity.
A crossroads of peoples and beliefs
This region has been a meeting place for thousands of years. Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Christians and Muslims traded, settled and borrowed from one another, and their protective objects travelled with them, many of them indebted to ancient Egypt. Several talismans here are shared across faiths, with each community giving them its own name and story.
At the heart of many of them lies the evil eye: the belief that an envious or admiring look can bring misfortune, especially to children, young animals and anything beautiful or new. Greek and Roman writers discussed it, and the belief remains widespread from Spain and Italy to Turkey, Iran and beyond. Much of the region’s talismanic craft answers that one worry.
Here talismans are not museum pieces but part of the furniture of daily life.
Glass, silver, coral and thread
Materials follow local skills. Glassmaking, long practised in Egypt and Phoenicia and today in workshops near İzmir in Turkey, produced the cobalt blue eye bead. Silversmiths in Morocco, Tunisia and the Levant made hands and pendants decorated with filigree or enamel, while craftsmen around Naples worked red coral and gold into horns.
Words mattered as much as materials. Letters, sacred names and clever word puzzles were often believed to carry a force of their own, so inscriptions appear on amulets alongside images. And the simplest charm of all needed nothing more than a length of red wool.
Eyes and hands
The evil eye bead, in Turkish and mati in Greek, turns the danger into its own defence: a watchful eye that meets an envious look. Glass eye beads have been made in the region for millennia, from early examples in Egypt and Mesopotamia to the bright blue beads made in Turkey today. They are pinned to babies’ clothes, hung in cars and set above doors.
The Hamsa is an open hand, often with an eye at its centre. Called the Hand of Fatima by many Muslims and the Hand of Miriam by many Jews, it is shared across North Africa and the Near East as a sign of blessing and protection. A hand carved on the Gate of Justice at the Alhambra in Granada, built in 1348, shows how old and honoured the motif is.
Roman roots
The Cornicello of Naples, a small twisted horn of red coral, red enamel or gold, has roots in ancient ideas about horns as signs of strength and plenty. Neapolitans hang it in homes, cars and shops, and many hold that it should be received as a gift. The hand gesture of the horns, made with the index and little fingers, belongs to the same family of protective signs.
Roman girls wore the Lunula, a crescent moon pendant, as a protective charm, just as boys wore the bulla. The playwright Plautus mentions a gold lunula given to a girl on her birthday, and it was usually set aside around the time of marriage.
The Sator square is a of five Latin words that reads the same in four directions. Examples scratched on walls at Pompeii date from before the eruption of 79 CE, and the square went on to appear on amulets, in manuscripts and on house walls across Europe for many centuries. In parts of Germany it was even written on wooden discs as a charm against fire.
The Pentacle links the region with philosophy. The Pythagoreans of Croton in southern Italy are said to have used the five-pointed star as a sign of recognition, associated with the Greek word for health. Renaissance grimoires later drew pentacles as protective seals, and today the pentacle is a sacred symbol for many modern Pagans.
The red string may be the most widely shared of all. In Jewish folk custom a red thread is often associated with Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem, red and white cords greet the spring in Romania and Bulgaria, and similar threads are tied in Hindu and Buddhist practice. It is knotted on with a wish and worn until it falls away.
Living traditions
Few regions keep their talismans in such everyday use. A grandmother in Athens may pin a mati to a baby’s blanket, a shopkeeper in Naples may keep a horn by the till, and a family in Marrakesh may hang a silver hamsa by the door. These objects belong to daily life as much as to religion.
If you wear one, you join that ordinary, affectionate custom. A gift is often thought best, and many people keep a talisman from a grandparent for decades.
taliaris describes beliefs and customs; it makes no claim that a talisman has an effect.