Note 29: — V.—RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION. (Wall-Cases 98-106.)

Nails themselves were highly esteemed as instruments of magic. Ovid, for instance, says that Medea (the typical witch) made waxen effigies of absent foes, and then drove nails into the vital parts.29 Examples of magical nails are seen in the series of bronze nails (No. 146) covered with cabalistic inscriptions and signs, and sometimes showing a strange mixture of Judaism and Paganism, as when Solomon and Artemis are invoked together. They may be attributed to the Gnostics, a sect which arose in the second century after Christ. Their claim was that, by a combination of various religious beliefs, they arrived at the only true knowledge of divine things. The magic nail has in one case (No. 147) been used to fasten a bronze lamp, decorated with a head of Medusa, into a socket.