The doll – as a popular symbol – indicates the continuation of life, and its strength lies in the prime of youth, and it is a symbol of fertility and childbearing. The people call the girl or young woman a “doll/bride”. Folk dolls appear in many forms and shapes, they may appear in semi-natural images and forms, or tend towards symbolism and abstraction. Some of them may become mere decorative motifs, such as what we see in many woodwork, pottery or metal pieces, embroidery or talli artifacts. These motifs take many shapes, including triangles with circles on top of their heads, or small lozenges, and many other shapes that are as close as possible to the shapes of puppets, and they appear on the artifacts of most Arab and mediterian regions. We may see it centered on geometric or botanical and floral shapes represented in the balconies of Islamic mosques, walls and buildings in general. Some of them are related to some custom practices, traditions, or seasons such as harvesting or flooding, sometimes with religious occasions and feasts, or they may be related to a special event in  life cicle such as marriageor birth. Some of them are also associated with some magical practices of white and black magic. The doll of envy: is paper doll of envy or alum doll used in a popular magical practice associated with what is known as “white magic”, where the magical ritual here aims to remove the damage caused by the envious eye, and the envy paper doll has a great role in this ritual. The practice may be performed on a paper doll made in the form of the envious, and the needle is inserted into it several times mentioning names of the suspected persons of envy. This paper is filled with salt which they belive has a great role in protection, and the envied person passes it seven times (the number of days of the week in which envy is likely to occur). The practice may include that a person collects a pot of straw in front of seven houses surrounding the house of the envied – before sunset – and the one who does this work must not talk to anyone during his going and returning, as he is then these straws burned with the “paper doll of envy”.

Reference:
Fadia Abd El Hady , Envy from a social perspective, Article 16, Volume 21, Issue 4, Spring 2020, Page 369-397
Safaa Tantawy, Envy between folk beliefs and social practices, Field study in Menofia governorate, Master thesis, High Institute of Folklore, Academy of Arts, Egypt, 2016.
Mohamed El Gohary, Encyclopedia of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Folk beliefs and traditional knowledge, ministry of culture, Cairo, 2008.