Prayer Scrolls

These lengths of paper, or sometimes parchment, were considered "amulets of protection" or "hmayil".
These were proper talismans, different from all other manuscripts, and very popular. Sometimes less than ten centimetres wide and often more than three meters long, they were rolled up in small pouches, the ""amulet holders"" and sewn onto or inside clothes, or hidden under pillows. They accompanied every traveller or trader to protect him from curses, bandits, bad encounters, diseases and all kinds of dangers during journeys into unknown countries lasting several months. The prayers also called for good luck, wealth, childbirth, repelled the evil eye, gossip, demons, the evil gaze. The oldest date from the 15th century. The beliefs of the time combined magical formulas with prayers interspersed with images of the Virgin and Child, the Catholicos Nerses Chnorhali, the archangels Michael and Gabriel, the holy warriors George, Sergius, Demetrios, Menas and Mercurius and other magical figures often accompanied by cabalistic signs. In order to discourage the use of these protective writings, the Church had forbidden them.
If, by chance, a scroll is complete together with its colophon, it will contain the name of the beneficiary.