335  See fig. 1 Amulet for the protection of a woman in labor and her newborn, intended for the North wall, paper, Iraqi Kurdistan, 20th century Windows on Jewish Worlds Gross Family Collection Several years ago, William Gross 1 acquired two rela- tively large amulets intended to protect the woman in labor and her newborn. These amulets, written and drawn by the same person, are part of a series including four amulets that had apparently been meant to hang on the walls of the delivery room. 2 Two additional examples of such series are known, written by others. One is found in the Gross Family Collection as well and the other is in The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (University of Cali- fornia, Berkeley). 3 Related to all these findings is another item from the Gross Family Collection – a large sheet of paper where someone began to draw the complex structure of one of the amulets in the series and stopped before completion due to a copying mistake. The writer, however, did not dis- card this sheet and, instead, used its other side to record sixty-two recipes for dealing with difficulties in childbirth. This article is an attempt to shed light on these two unique and mutually related events. We will first briefly present the series of amulets and then discuss the recipes sheet. Chen Avizohar-Hagai & Yuval Harari Childbirth Magic in Amulets and Recipes from the Gross Family Collection A Series of Amulets for Protecting the Mother and Her Newborn The four amulets from the Gross Family Collection and from the Magnes Collection constitute an exceptional and unique instance of magic theory and practice. No other source, either textual or material, is known to have used a structured series of amulets as a complex unit of protection. The four amulets represent three series, each of the series consisting of four items and created by a dif- ferent person (two of the amulets, as noted, belong to one series). Though the three series share the same pattern, there are differences between them reflecting the personal preferences and knowledge of each writer-designer. It is evident from the par- tial finding available that the four amulets in each series were written and drawn in a fixed pattern and both their text and form were largely identical. What makes them a series are the structural changes that were made in them, changes that both differentiate them and tie them together. 4 Relying on these changes, which are consistently repeated in all of them, we can determine that the