adobe (12)

On display in the Oriental Institute Museum are two "magical bricks" from an ancient Egyptian tomb. They are made from finely sifted Nile clay and left unbaked, rather unlike your typical architectural sun-baked mud brick. Magical bricks were inscribed with selections from Spell 151 of the Book of the Dead. According to the rubric, which provides the manufacturing and placement instructions, four bricks and four amulets set in the bricks were produced for each tomb. Placed into niches in the wall or on the floor of the burial chamber, magical bricks protected the deceased at the cardinal directions by warding off potentially dangerous entities. The designation "magical brick" derives from their rectangular shape, their designation as d≤b.t "brick" in ancient Egyptian texts, and their apotropaic function within the tomb. There is nothing particularly "magical" in a Western sense about magical bricks, for the properties which we would consider "magical" were notions that existed within the logical cosmology of ancient Egyptian religious traditions. LINK

(fonte: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)