India, Oct. 17 -- Wands, spellbooks, figurines. an exhibition that opened at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, and has since travelled to New York, explores how magic, in its earliest avatars, wasn't about trickery at all, but about belief - and traces how that belief changed over time.

"The idea of magic is likely as old as mankind itself," says Jeffrey Spier, curator of Cursed! The Power of Magic in the Ancient World. Over five years, he has tracked down artefacts that represent that idea, from as far back Ancient Egypt, 4,500 years ago.

Some are on loan from the British Museum, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others. Most have roots in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, and parts of the Medi...