![]() ![]() ![]() Thus, the heart amulet must be seen as a depiction of the heart ib, mainly seen as the seat of the mind, and not so much as the depiction of the cardiac organ, strictly speaking. With these studies we propose that the heart amulet must be understand, not so much as a substitute of the cardiac muscle (the heart hati) but as a symbol of wisdom, being its main magical purpose related to the conceptions of cosmic integration. Crossing archaeological data with iconographic sources is crucial to identify distinct contexts of meaning. In this book we present a number of studies in which the heart amulet is approached in its extraordinary diversity of shapes and meanings. However, this reading is only accurate for a few funerary objects that can not be seen as representatives of the heart amulet. It has been repeatedly suggested that the purpose of the heart amulet is to be a magical substitute of the heart. ![]() The fact is that its symbolic meaning not only has been largely overlooked by scholarly research, as its magical purpose has been often misunderstood. In fact, the apparently simplicity of the object can give us a wrong idea about the degree of complexity of its religious meaning. Although apparently simple in shape, this object was important enough to be the amulet most often depicted in Egyptian art, especially from the Ramesside Period on. The heart amulet is one of the most common Egyptian apotropaic objects.
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