Tyet Amulet
Late Period, Dynasty 26 (664–525 BCE)
Ancient Egyptian
Faience; 4 × 2 × 0.5 cm (1 5/8 × 3/4 × 3/16 in.)
The Art Institute of Chicago, purchased with funds provided by Henry H. Getty and Charles L. Hutchinson, 1892.86
This amulet, called a tit or tyet in ancient Egyptian or an “Isis knot” or “Isis girdle” in modern parlance, represents a length of cloth folded into a knot with a loop on top and the ends of the cloth hanging down. Its association with Isis is most clearly established by Book of the Dead Spell 156 which is illustrated with an image of this type of amulet. The text states “the power of Isis shall be the magical protection [of] his [limbs] … no way is blocked against him.”[1] According to the text, the amulet should be made of dark red jasper, apparently because that color alluded to the menstrual blood of Isis. This too is confirmed by Spell 156: “You have your blood Isis, you have your power, you have your magic.”[2] The Book of the Dead stipulates that the tyet was to be placed on the neck of the mummy, although examples recovered from mummies were more often found on the chest.[3]1
Although ideally the amulet was to be made of jasper, less expensive materials, especially molded faience (as in this example) or glass, were also used. This amulet, like many others, is covered with a blue-green rather than a dark red glaze, which was an appropriate substitute because of the symbolic value of these colors. Green, as the color of vegetation, evoked the idea of regeneration. Blue refers to the sky and the eternal rebirth of the sun, which, by extension, alluded to the rebirth of the deceased (see cat. 41 for the same blue used on an ushabti). This example was treated like a tiny statue, with a back pillar that has two piercings so it could be strung, perhaps on a collar.2
The tyet is known as early as the First Dynasty.[4] Amulets in the shape of a tyet, however, are known only from the middle of Dynasty 18 (reign of Amenhotep III, about 1390 BCE), and they continue to be made through the Roman Period.[5]3
For more on amulets, see About Amulets.4
Provenance
Émile Brugsch (1842–1930), Bulaq Museum and Egyptian Antiquities Service, Cairo; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1892.5
Publication History
Thomas George Allen, A Handbook of the Egyptian Collection (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1923), 126.6
Roberta Casagrande-Kim, ed., When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra, with contributions by Mary C. Greuel et al., exh. cat. (New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, 2014), 54, fig. 3-10; 98, no. 84.
7
- Thomas George Allen, trans., The Egyptian Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day: Ideas of the Ancient Egyptians Concerning the Hereafter as Expressed in Their Own Terms, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 37 (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1974), 155. For an image of the vignette, see Raymond O. Faulkner, trans., The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994), pl. 32.
- Allen, Egyptian Book of the Dead, 155.
- Book of the Dead Spell 156, quoted in Allen, Egyptian Book of the Dead, 155. For the placement of the tyet on other parts of the body, see W. M. Flinders Petrie, Amulets: Illustrated by the Egyptian Collection in University College, London (London: Constable, 1914), 23.
- Claudia Müller-Winkler, Die ägyptischen Objekt-Amulette: Mit Publikation der Sammlung des Biblischen Instituts der Universität Freiburg Schweiz, ehemals Sammlung Fouad S. Matouk, OBO Series Archaeologica 5 (Freiburg and Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 1987), 395. However, there are representations of officials in the Old Kingdom wearing what appear to be similar pendants. See Joachim Friedrich Quack, Altägyptische Amulette und ihre Handhabung, Orientalische Religionen in der Antike 31 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022), 48, 480, fig. 7.
- Carol Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 45.
Emily Teeter, “Cat. 90 Tyet Amulet,” in Ancient Egyptian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago by Emily Teeter and Ashley F. Arico, ed. Ashley F. Arico (Art Institute of Chicago, 2025), https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593213/92.
© 2025 by The Art Institute of Chicago. This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
