AMULETS: ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, ORIENTAL 327
	knots, and certain words or figures, as particularly the word Abracadabra formed in triangle or pyramid, thus :
	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 :
	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 :
	■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.