The oldest items in the collection are in the first display case. They are clay incantation bowls made by the Jews of Babylonia between roughly the fifth and eighth centuries, and they look like ordinary cereal bowls, except that the inside of each one is covered in Aramaic script that spirals from the center outward. They are amulets. People commissioned them by name, had them inscribed with blessings and incantations, and then buried them upside down beneath the threshold of the house so that demons could not get in. Nobody was ever supposed to read them; we only have them because they were buried intentionally and then unearthed. The plaque above the case ends by asking the question the entire exhibit is built around: what can texts actually do?
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