Brass forty-key bowl

Brass ṭās-e chehel kelid (bowl of forty keys) with engraved inscriptions and signs of the Zodiac, Persian, 1751-1900

In Persian, bowls such as this are known as a ṭās-e chehel kelid, literally, a ‘Forty-Key Bowl’. While museum records describe it as a divination bowl, historical evidence suggests that these items were primarily used for healing and protection. Water would have been poured into the bowl until it covered the engraved inscriptions. The water was then drunk or gently poured over the person seeking healing. People believed that Qur'anic verses, prayers and sacred names engraved on the metal passed their blessing into the water. Rather than separating medicine from religion, many communities saw them as working together. Healing the body, seeking God's protection, and guarding against unseen causes of illness were all part of the same understanding of wellbeing.

Historical accounts from north-eastern Iran, particularly the region of Khorasan, describe the use of healing bowls during childbirth, childhood illnesses and rituals intended to protect families from the evil eye – a belief, common to many cultures, that envy or jealousy could bring harm or misfortune.

The most important of these ceremonies took place forty days after childbirth, a period traditionally seen as one of recovery and vulnerability for both mother and baby. At the end of this period, water from a Forty-Key Bowl might be poured over the newborn as part of a blessing. Families who did not own such a bowl often recreated its symbolic power in other ways, for example by dipping a wooden comb into water forty times before washing the baby. Different regions had different customs, but they all shared the same idea: that the number forty marked a moment of protection, renewal and a safe beginning to a new stage of life.

Why forty? Across Iranian culture, forty has long symbolised transition and completion. Protective rituals often involved waiting forty days, repeating an action forty times or using forty symbolic objects.

This bowl was purchased in Tehran in 1933 by Peter Johnston-Saint, one of Henry Wellcome’s collecting agents. The seller is listed only as "Putrus", possibly Hirmiz Putrus who appears elsewhere in the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum archive in connection with Persian manuscripts.

Source: Samane Sabzekar