Why are there so many amulets for childbirth?

Because until the twentieth century it was the most dangerous predictable event in a woman's life, recurring several times, with no effective medical remedy. Infant mortality was worse and equally unexplained. The density of charm practice around birth tracks the actual risk almost exactly.

What is a birth girdle?

A long narrow parchment roll, several feet in length, covered in prayers, saints' names and protective figures, wrapped around a woman's body in labour. Several survive from medieval England, and analysis of one found proteins consistent with actual use in childbirth rather than devotional storage.

Why are ancient nursery gods so frightening?

Because they were chosen to frighten what comes for children. Taweret is a pregnant hippopotamus with a crocodile on her back; Bes is a grinning dwarf with his tongue out; Pazuzu is a demon set to guard against another demon. Softness is not a feature of protective figures in the ancient world.

Are traditional infant charms safe?

Several are not. Anything beaded around a baby's neck, including amber teething necklaces, carries a documented strangulation and choking risk and is warned against by paediatric authorities. Sharp iron in a cot is likewise dangerous. Those traditions belong in the historical record rather than the nursery.

Talismans · Purposes

Fertility, pregnancy and birth

Also called: Childbed amulets, nursery charms

The most guarded threshold in every culture in this library, and the reason so much of the material exists at all.

At a glance

Why so dense: Childbirth was the most dangerous predictable event in a life
Mesopotamian form: Lamashtu plaques and Pazuzu heads
Egyptian form: Taweret and Bes; hippopotamus-ivory birth wands
English form: Birth girdles, inscribed parchment rolls, several feet long
The proof they were used: Protein analysis of Wellcome MS 632, 2021
Materials: Coral, amber, iron, silver, red thread

Why the practice is so dense here

It is not superstition disproportionate to the risk. It is superstition exactly proportionate to the risk.

Before the twentieth century, maternal mortality in Europe ran at something like one death per hundred to two hundred births, and a woman having six or eight children faced that odds repeatedly. Infant mortality was worse: in many places a quarter or more of children died before their first birthday, from causes nobody could see, name or prevent.

So childbirth was a predictable, recurring, potentially fatal event with no medical remedy worth the name. Every culture in this library responded with charms, and the density of the practice tracks the danger almost exactly. When you look at a museum case full of amulets, you are usually looking at the nursery.

Mesopotamia and Egypt

Lamashtu is the clearest case in the ancient world. A demon who kills infants and mothers, she is depicted on bronze plaques with a lion's head and bird's talons, suckling a piglet and a puppy. The plaques name her, list her attributes, and order her out, and the text is drafted like a legal expulsion rather than a prayer.

Against her the household deployed Pazuzu, a second demon, whose grimacing head was worn as a pendant or fixed to the plaque itself. Setting one monster to guard against another is not a common strategy in this library and it is a memorable one.

Egypt's nursery gods are similarly unbeautiful. Taweret is a pregnant hippopotamus standing upright with a crocodile on her back and a lion's legs. Bes is a squat grinning dwarf with his tongue out. Both were everywhere in Egyptian households, on beds, headrests and cosmetic jars.

Egypt also produced the single most explicit birth object in the ancient record: the apotropaic wand, sometimes called a magic knife. These are curved blades cut from hippopotamus ivory, common in the Middle Kingdom, carved along their length with files of protective figures, Taweret and Bes among them, and often inscribed with a first-person declaration of protection for a named mother and child. Many are worn at the tip, which suggests they were dragged across a surface, most plausibly to draw a protective circle around the bed. The animal is not incidental either: the hippopotamus was the most dangerous thing in the river, and the wand is cut from its tooth.

The nursery gods of the ancient world are not soft. They are chosen to frighten what comes for children.

Medieval Europe

Birth girdles are the striking English and continental form: long narrow parchment rolls, several feet in length, covered in prayers, saints' names, the measure of Christ's wounds and protective figures, wrapped around a labouring woman's body.

For a long time it was possible to argue that these were devotional keepsakes rather than working equipment. That question is now settled for at least one of them. In 2021 Sarah Fiddyment and colleagues published a biomolecular study in Royal Society Open Science of a fifteenth-century English girdle, Wellcome MS 632, lifting proteins from its surface without damaging it. They recovered cervicovaginal proteins concentrated on the most-handled sections, alongside honey, milk and legumes, all of which appear in medieval birth remedies. The roll was not kept in a chest. It was used, in the room, on the body.

Alongside them: eaglestones, the aetites of Pliny and the early modern midwives, hollow geodes with a loose stone rattling inside like a womb carrying a child, tied above the knee during pregnancy to hold the child in and moved to the thigh in labour to draw it down. Girdles of saints, borrowed from churches for the term. Written charms invoking the birth of Christ. Almost nothing that could help, and a great deal that gave the room something to do.

Afterwards

The charms do not stop at the birth. The weeks following were understood as the most dangerous period of all, for both mother and child, and practice reflects it.

Iron in the cradle, or scissors under the mattress, against changelings. Red thread on the wrist. A coral branch or amber beads at the throat. A nazar pinned to the back of the clothing. The mother kept indoors until a ritual re-entry, which in Christian Europe was churching and has equivalents across most of the traditions here.

Many of these customs outlived the danger. The coral teething stick, the amber necklace and the red bracelet are still sold, now mostly to people who have never lost a child and do not expect to, which is a measure of how thoroughly medicine changed the ground under this whole category.

Two of those survivals carry real risk today: anything beaded around an infant's neck, and anything sharp in a cot. Both are covered on their own pages.

What the traditions did

Reported as history. Nothing here is medical advice.

Charms for conceiving: figurines, votive offerings, pilgrimage to specific shrines, tied cords and knots.
Charms for carrying: girdles, eaglestones, written rolls, saints' relics borrowed for the term.
Charms for the labour room: girdles wrapped around the body, inscribed prayers, everything in the room untied and unlocked.
Charms for the newborn: coral, amber, red thread, a nazar pinned to the back, iron in the cradle.
Charms for the mother: a period of seclusion followed by a ritual re-entry into the community.
Disposal: girdles were returned, borrowed relics given back, and worn-out infant charms replaced rather than kept.

The untying custom is worth noting because it is so widespread. Across Europe, knots, locks, plaits and buttons in the birth room were opened, on the reasoning that nothing in the house should be closed while something was trying to open.

Charms and materials for this purpose

The nursery repertoire.

This page reports historical practice. Nothing on it is medical advice, and several traditional infant charms carry documented risks that their own pages set out.

Questions for reflection

The nursery gods of the ancient world are frightening on purpose. What does that say about what protection is?
The charms tracked the danger almost exactly. What does our own most-charmed moment say about what we fear?
Several of these customs outlived the risk that produced them. Why do you think they survived?

Frequently asked questions

: Because until the twentieth century it was the most dangerous predictable event in a woman's life, recurring several times, with no effective medical remedy. Infant mortality was worse and equally unexplained. The density of charm practice around birth tracks the actual risk almost exactly.
: A long narrow parchment roll, several feet in length, covered in prayers, saints' names and protective figures, wrapped around a woman's body in labour. Several survive from medieval England, and analysis of one found proteins consistent with actual use in childbirth rather than devotional storage.
: A hollow geode with a loose stone rattling inside it, which was read as a stone pregnant with another. It was tied above the knee during pregnancy to hold the child in and moved to the thigh during labour to draw it down. It was in use in Europe from antiquity into the eighteenth century.
: Because they were chosen to frighten what comes for children. Taweret is a pregnant hippopotamus with a crocodile on her back; Bes is a grinning dwarf with his tongue out; Pazuzu is a demon set to guard against another demon. Softness is not a feature of protective figures in the ancient world.
: Several are not. Anything beaded around a baby's neck, including amber teething necklaces, carries a documented strangulation and choking risk and is warned against by paediatric authorities. Sharp iron in a cot is likewise dangerous. Those traditions belong in the historical record rather than the nursery.
: Yes, for one of them. A 2021 study by Sarah Fiddyment and colleagues in Royal Society Open Science analysed proteins lifted from a fifteenth-century English girdle, Wellcome MS 632, and found cervicovaginal proteins concentrated on the most-handled sections, together with honey, milk and legumes known from medieval birth remedies. It is direct evidence that the roll was worn on the body in childbirth rather than kept as a devotional object.
: A curved blade cut from a hippopotamus tusk, common in the Middle Kingdom, carved with files of protective figures including Taweret and Bes and often inscribed with a declaration of protection for a named mother and child. Many are worn at the tip, which suggests they were drawn across a surface to trace a protective circle around the bed. The material matters: the hippopotamus was the most dangerous animal in the river.