Anna Bonnell Friedin, University of Michigan
The physician Soranus was skeptical of amulets, but still maintained their usefulness in medical emergencies, including uterine hemorrhage: “...their application should not be forbidden, for even if the amulet does no good directly, still through hope (elpis) it will perhaps cause the patient to be more cheerful” (Gyn. 3.12.110–13 = Ilberg 3.42.3). This paper reads against the grain to explore the dynamic scene Soranus glosses over, in which a woman, perhaps having just given birth, begins to hemorrhage. Let us imagine her network of care, which might include midwives, enslaved people, attendants, and members of a household or kinship group working together—or potentially at cross purposes—to stop the flow of blood. Now expand the network: in addition to the people gathered in the birthing chamber, consider the objects they hold and wear. Among them is a tiny amulet, designed for the purpose of staunching hemorrhage. If we take seriously the notion that amulets could and did change health outcomes—how did they do so?
My focus will be amulets associated with gynecological and reproductive matters, including uterine amulets (examined in, e.g., Hanson 1995; Dasen 2015, 21–108; Faraone 2018, 96–98). I will introduce these amulets as part of a textured network for addressing and mitigating uncertainty. Rather than center an analysis on amulets’ symbolic elements as a means of understanding their utility, I will zoom out to assess the practices of their use in a community of care like the one I sketched above. In this context, amulets functioned as “technologies of hope” within an intimate, material network. Hope adheres to certain objects (Ahmed 2004), especially those—like amulets—that bring humans into contact with powerful nonhuman agencies (cf. Frankfurter 2019). In the case of amuletic gems, this contact was established through scalar manipulation—through miniaturization, material (e.g., hematite, jasper), epigraphy, and imagery (including deities such as Isis, Chnoubis, Anubis; see, e.g., CB-d 1050).
The interconnections I am positing among amulets and bodies might suggest the “flat ontology” of (some) Actor-Network theorists, within which objects such as small, inscribed gems could be understood on the same plane as medical instruments or human actors. This notion has much in common with the concept of sympathy, one popular, ancient explanation for amulets’ power. But to think in terms of “flatness” is misleading: amulets evoke hierarchies and communities—both as assemblages in themselves and within wider ones—that could provide women and their caretakers with hope for protection. In some cases, coercion and violence are overtly built into their vocabulary (see, e.g., the phylacteries examined in Tomlin 1997; 2008). Amulets were imbricated in what Mel Chen has called a “hierarchy of animacy” (Chen 2012), not least because of their dismissive treatment by Soranus and others. But as this paper concludes, amulets were not simply positioned in such hierarchies; their materiality and practical use could help both rearticulate and challenge the gendered order, creating communities that activated their animacy and affectivity—and in turn, their capacity to inspire hope.