Cylindrical amulet containers – an overview

Amulet case, length 7.6 cm
Egypt, 1850-1800 BCE 
The upper cap is removable.
British Museum

Phoenician gold amulet case, 8th-3rd century BCE
British Museum [museum record]

Gold Pyxis – a small vessel that most often contained cosmetic products 
5th century BCE; Kukova Mogila mound, Duvanlii village, Plovdiv region, Bulgaria

Gold pyxis, H 2.5 cm, W 3 cm, weight 27.9 g. 4th-3rd century BCE, “Ormankov Grob”, Tremnik village, Negotino Municipality, North Macedonia
[read more]

1st century BCE, Židovar, Serbia [read more]

amulet – container British museum
Gandhara, 2nd-3rd century; length 8 cm
gold, garnet, serpentine

Amulet from State museums in Berlin from the 2nd-3rd century Egypt. The chased decoration shows two snakes in crowns, which may be a reference to the figures of Isis and Serapis. An amphora between snakes, birds and fish around.
The underside is decorated with a geometric surface pattern; the reverse bears a mirror-image Greek inscription with a protective formula. An amulet is 3.5 cm long.
Farther reading:
Notes on the furniture of children’s tombs in Greco-Roman Egypt: associated furniture and furniture depicted [Remarques sur le mobilier des tombes d’enfants dans l’Égypte gréco-romaine: mobilier associé et mobilier représenté]
Marie-Dominique Nenna https://books.openedition.org/pccj/1376

Syria Roman period, 4th century; length ~5 cm
“Cylindrical four-bail case, closed with opening at one end (cap). Object entirely decorated with granulated patterns. 
5 groups of large granules arranged in a pyramid.”
BNF

At the Kyz-Aul necropolis (Kerch Peninsula, Crimea, Ukraine) a new field season of the South Bosporan Archaeological Expedition [russian] began under the leadership of archaeologist Pavel Getsko. Almost immediately an interesting discovery was made – the tip of a military spear. The artifact was found in a layer of plunder waste next to a monumental stone crypt. Last year, in the same place, archaeologists from the Institute of Archeology of Crimea and volunteers from the Archeology Foundation found unique gold jewelry – antique amulets, one of which was engraved with an ancient magic spell. [July 2023 https://vk.com/fondarchae or https://web.archive.org/web/20231007174058/https://vk.com/fondarchae]