The Story of The Amulet - Literary Significance & Criticism

Literary Significance & Criticism

The Story of the Amulet profits greatly from Nesbit's deep research into ancient civilizations in general and that of ancient Egypt in particular. The book is dedicated to Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, the translator of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities of the British Museum, with whom she met to discuss the history of the ancient Near East while writing the book. The Amulet is sentient and is named Ur Hekau Setcheh; this is a genuine Ancient Egyptian name. The hieroglyphics written on the back of the Amulet are also authentic.

Amulet coincidentally appeared the same year as the first installment of another story involving children viewing different periods of history, Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill.

During their adventure in Babylon, the children attempt to summon a Babylonian deity named Nisroch but are temporarily unable to recall his name: Cyril, in an obvious in-joke, refers to the god as "Nesbit". Author E. Nesbit was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and was knowledgeable about ancient religions; she may well have been aware that there was indeed an ancient deity named Nesbit: this was the Egyptian god of the fifth hour of the day. In F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's novel The Woman Between the Worlds (1994, taking place in 1898), E. Nesbit briefly appears in the narrative, dressed in costume as the Egyptian god Nesbit.

The chapter The Queen in London contains broadly negative stereotypes of stockbrokers clearly intended to be Jewish: they are described as having "curved noses"; they have Jewish names such as Levinstein, Rosenbaum, Hirsh and Cohen; and their dialogue is rendered in an exaggerated dialect of Yiddish-inflected English.