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AMULETS: ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, ORIENTAL 327
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knots, and certain words or figures, as particularly the word Abracadabra formed in triangle or pyramid, thus :
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A
curious charm which was extensively used as an amulet in medieval times
consists of five Latin words so arranged that they can be read
backwards or forwards and also upwards or downwards. The disposition
of the letters is as follows :
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This
charm has been preserved for us in Greek and Coptic as well as in Roman
characters, and examples of it have been found cut in a marble slab
above the chapel of St. Laurent at Rochemaur (Ardèche), France, and
also in the plaster wall of an old Roman house at Cirncester,
Gloucestershire, England. In a Greek manuscript in the Bibliothèque
Nationale, in Paris,17 the Latin words are transliterated and translated as follows :
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■Mi Gr. No. 2411, fol. 60. See C. Werscher, BuU. de la Soc. Nat. dea aatiq. de la France, 1874, voL xxxv, pp. 153 sqq.
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