A “blue amulet” against vertigo, melancholia and epilepsy could be made up of the following ingredients: shavings from an elk’s horn and from a human skull, to be reduced to a fine powder, the excrement of a peacock, white agate, lapis lazuli or _lapis Armenus_, of which enough was to be used to give the required sky-blue tint. The whole mass was then to be softened by the addition of gum tragacanth, and formed into heart-shaped tablets, which were to be dried out in the air, and then smoothed on a turning-lathe. These amulets were to be worn attached to the neck or the arm, sometimes they were enclosed in a little receptacle of silver or of red sandal-wood and suspended from the neck.[297] Lapis Lazuli In Papyrus 3027 of the Berlin Museum, a record that dates from about the fifteenth century B.C., and appears to be contemporaneous with the celebrated Papyrus Ebers, we have directions for the curative use of three stones as amulets; namely, lapis lazuli, malachite (Amazon stone?) and, probably, red jasper. The interpretation of the text offers considerable difficulty, but it seems that the stones were worked into the form of beads and then strung on a cord and suspended from a sick child’s neck. Thereupon a formula was recited, calling upon the disease to pass through the beads and disperse itself through water and air, or, more literally, to attach itself to the denizens of water and air. The translation of Dr. Adolph Erman is as follows:[298] [A red bead? of lapis lazuli thereon.] ... a green bead? of malachite is thereon. a red bead of jasper? is thereon O, ye beads! fall upon the haunches [of the ...] in the flood; on the scales? of the fish in the stream; on the feathers of the birds in the heavens. Hasten forth! _nšw_, fall upon the earth Let this text be recited over the beads?, one of lapis lazuli, the other of jasper?, the other malachite, which are drawn on a string of ... and hung upon the neck of a child. Erman does not venture to translate the name of the disease (nšw), but says that another word derived from the same root signifies a discharge from the nose. Possibly we have to do with croup or some similar disease of the respiratory organs. A curious prescription for the cure of cataract is given in the Ebers Papyrus,[299] dating from about 1600 B.C. The six ingredients are as follows: genuine lapis lazuli, verdigris salve, a resinous substance perhaps similar to what is to-day called tabasheer, milk, stibium, and “crocodile-earth,” the slime of the Nile. It is possible that the word _chesbet_, which usually signifies lapis lazuli, was understood in this case as indicating some other stone, such as that known by the name of _lapis Armenus_—this latter is a carbonate of copper and really possesses astringent properties.