Obj. ID: 54248
  Sacred and Ritual  Le-Nekevah, Bayern (Bavaria), circa 1780

The following description was prepared by William Gross:

Printed amulets that could serve the purpose of more expensive hand-written talimans began to appear in the late 17th century, continuing into the 18th.  There are not a great many surviving examples, but the majority of those that we today possess are from Germany. The popularity of printed birth amulets in particular is apparent in the number that have originated in Southern Germany, especially from Sulzbach and Fuerth. Many different varieties of designs were printed in the 18th and 19th centuries, although most of them used the same textual elements. These include the invocation of the Patriarchs and their wives, the mention of Lilith with her many different names, the angels Sanoi, Sansanoi, and Samangalaf, the "Shir le-Ma'alot" (Psalm 121), and the story of Eliyahu meeting Lilith. Such an amulet was hung on the wall of the room where the mother and child dwelled after the birth.

The image of this 18th-century example is especially charming. The image of the female is taken from a Zodiac series and appears in a woman's prayer book from 1776 published in Fuerth, Gross Family Collection B.366. This fact indicates the probable time, place, and publisher for the printing of this amulet as well. This is the earliest existing example of such a double printing not separated.  There are two other examples of this amulet in the Gross Family Collection: 027.011.002 and 027.011.206.  But each of these same images is from different printings of the amulet, as the printer's devices forming the decorative frame around the text are different in each case. This amulet was probably printed originally on the same sheet as the one for the male child but was cut for hanging in the birth room.