Metropolitan Museum of Art calls tefillin “an Egyptian amulet”

 

This is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art webpage showing its collections:

 

 

This object is obviously tefillin shel rosh, called “phylacteries” in the New Testament, that Jewish men wear for prayer every day (and in the times of the Talmud, all day.)

It is sort of amazing that tefillin could be categorized in the museum as Islamic era amulet since 1962 with no one recognizing it.

This tefillin shel rosh  looks startlingly modern with even the four-branched Shin on the side.

While tefillin shel rosh seem to have been cube shaped since at least the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, there are conical tefillin shel yad in the Cairo Geniza and cylindrical tefillin shel yad as late as a 1725 engraving by a French/Dutch artist Bernard Picart, as well as tefillin shel yad shaped like an arch in (seemingly) the 19th century.

 

 

 

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz says that the Talmudic prescription that tefillin shel yad must be square only refers to the base, not the box, as is the case with all of these.

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