The talismans are said to have been revealed supernaturally to Old Testament figures, and contained within them the knowledge of cures and of helpful spirits, and were respected as powerful medicine.

There construction of design insofar as the clerics were concerned was thought have been revealed before the time of Christ, representational paintings are believed to have begun with Luke and John’s images of Mary and the crucifixion of Jesus.

The clerics recognised that talismans that had been revealed before the birth of Christ to King Solomon were a temporal sequence which for them suggested the Old Testament is the terrain of the hidden and the New Testament being of the terrain of the self evident and that this typology is the cornerstone of their classification of imagesand of their knowledge as well, which created a bridge between to the two classes.

Christ’s cross is the outward form of a sign that is the name of god, which is itself also Solomon’s sign or seal; Solomon and Susenyos (to whom the angel bows, of the Solomonic line) may equally be represented by a full length portrait or by a seal depicting only their eyes, and are used for the averting of evil and for healing of the sick as well as other magical purposes. Talismans were also used to drive demons away, and as such some of them contain the image Abba Melki driving a demon before him.

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