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height; the smaller one five inches and a quarter in diameter and one and a half in height. The inner cup or basin in both cases is two inches in diameter. The keys are suspended from perforations numbering thirty in the case of the larger cup and twenty in that of the smaller. (See illustration opposite.)

To begin with the larger cup; on the inside we have round the rim certain numerical signs equivalent to the number 1711 — which may have magical significance — but the numbers are not distinct nor are they uniform. Then follows the inscription taken from the chapter "Y.S." of the Koran (Surah XXXVI) "In the name of the Merciful and Compassionate God. Y.S. By the wise Quran, verily, thou art of the apostles upon a right way. The revelation of the mighty the Merciful! That thou mayest warn a people whose fathers were not warned, and who themselves are heedless. Now is the sentence due against most of them, for they will not believe. Verily, we will place upon their necks fetters, and they shall reach up to their chins, and they shall have their heads forced back; and we will place before them a barrier, and behind them a barrier; and we will cover them and they shall not see; and it is all the same to them if thou dost warn them or dost warn them not, they will not believe. Thou canst only warn him who follows the reminder, and fears the Merciful in the unseen; but give him glad tidings or forgiveness and a noble hire."

The remainder of this section of the Koran is given on the outside of the cup on the outer circle and reads as follows:

Verily we quicken the dead, and write down what they have done before, and what vestiges they leave behind; and everything we counted in a plain model.

"Strike out for them a parable: the fellows of the city when there came to it the apostles; when we sent those two and they called them both liars." The outside of the cup

MAGIC BOWL AND AMULETS

The Magic Bowl is described in Chapter Nine. The amulets contain portions of the Koran, either folded flat or in a rolled cylinder. The leather amulet in the middle of the picture is used for infants and protects them from the Evil Eye. It has the names of angels and Jinn.

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also contains in bold characters five of the beautiful names of God, namely, "O Healer, O Sufficient One, O Thou Who Carest, O Thou Who Givest Health, O Thou Who Judgest.' Here also we have a number of mystical symbols, Arabic numbers, etc.

The smaller cup also has on the inside the first portion of the chapter already indicated and in addition the following verse from the twenty-fourth chapter of the Koran: "God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth; His light is as a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp is in the glass, the glass is as though it were a glittering star,” and a portion of the seventeenth chapter, "The Night Journey": "And we will send down of the Koran that which is a healing and a mercy to the believers." There is no inscription on the outside of the smaller cup. Each of the keys is inscribed with the words, "Bismillahi ar Rahman ar Rahim.” 15

Another cup is used for evil purposes. It is manufactured at Medina and bears the inscription in Arabic, "Al Medina the Illuminated. In the year 1305 A.H." It is made of aromatic wood with a yellow tinge and a bitter taste, turned by hand and with no verses from the Koran. This cup is called Al Kubaiya al Kimiya, or "the cup of Alchemy." Its strange use is to separate husband and wife or by sorcery to injure a woman or draw her away into unlawful love. Two verses of the Koran are written backward with semen humanis on the inside of the cup and it is filled with water and the woman is made to drink it secretly. The verses are the following: "And the whoremonger shall marry none but a whore or an adultress; and the whore shall none marry but an idolater; God has prohibited this to the believers." And also a verse from the sixty-fifth chapter: "O Thou Prophet! when ye divorce women, then divorce them at their term, and calculate the term and fear God your Lord. Do 15 In the name of God the merciful, the compassionate.

not drive them out of their houses unless they have committed manifest adultery."

That this cup also is in common use is established by the fact that the person who gave it to me said that his father in Ramleh (near Alexandria) used to let it out and receive one pound a night for its use. Apparently these cups are manufactured in large quantities at Medina by the Moslems and the virtue consists not only in the power of the Koran chapters but in the material of the cup and the place of its manufacture.

Ahmed Zaki Pasha, an Arabic scholar and secretary of the Council of Ministers in Cairo, read a paper before the Egyptian Institute recently with regard to one of the healing cups now kept at the old Coptic Church as a relic.16 From this paper we learn the following particulars:

Magic Cups fall into two categories - those which cure the sufferings caused by violent and sudden emotions which the Arabs call "Cups of Terror," and those which serve to cure maladies, physical as well as moral, and even domestic troubles. The "Cups of Terror" are jealously preserved by those who possess them, and are in general use to this day in Egypt. The owners willingly lend them to their suffering fellow mortals; one condition, however, attaches to such loans, non-compliance with which will cause the cup to lose its charm forever the borrower must make a monetary deposit. Zeki Pasha related that in the case of one of these cups, which he produced, he had had to pay the sum of £75 to the mother of the head of the family possessing it.

The following is the procedure that must be followed to work the charm of the " Cup of Terror." The cup has to be filled with water at the hour when the Faithful proceed to the mosque for the dawn prayer. A bunch of keys and other

16 A full account of another cup of this character was given by E. Rehatsek, M.C.E., in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Soc., Vol. XIV, No. 37. Our illustration is taken from this article.

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