W | Weapons | Sword
F | Flower
M | Magen David
A | Angel | Angel, multi-winged
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The following description was prepared by William Gross:
Birth amulets come in a wide variety of shapes, content, and materials. Once custom revolves around the placing of four amulets on each of the walls of the room of mother and child after birth. There are examples in the Gross Family Collection from Morocco, Jerusalem, the Ukraine, and in the present case, Iraqi Kurdistan.
This is a larger than normal size birth amlet in a singular manuscript form. This is one of the more elaborate hand written and painted amulets seen. The lengthy text is very unusual and the large image in the center image of a protective angel in which amulet "names" are inscribed. This is based on the printed images of a page, sometimes printed with a Shiviti, and is an image that in the first decades of the 20th century became the iconic image for printed amulets from Jerusalem. In those examples, the angel figure was accompanied by a sketch of the Kabbalistic hand
There are several versions of the present amulet known from different hands, all slightly different from the other. Two such versions exist in the Gross Family Collection. There also exists a short amulet manuscript that gives instructions for how to write this talisman.
This amulet was created to protect pregnant women against infertility and miscarriage as well as to shield newborn male children on the eve of their circumcisions, from the machinations of the evil demon Lilith. Depicted in the center is a fierce multi-winged angel armed with two knives to defend against Lilith. The central image is surrounded by multiple texts calling upon the help of numerous angels and providing further measures of protective security. In the present collection, there is the second element as well as to what was originally a set of four amulets, 027.011.722. This unusual amulet is also closely related to one in the Judah L. Magnes Museum (2007.0.65; A5).