Flying Carpet

Arabian Nights was the set where Magic first reached for source material outside its own fiction, and Flying Carpet is the clearest design artifact of that reach: a literal storybook object rendered as a repeatable evasion-granter, equipment before equipment existed. The mechanical shape has aged into a category Wizards has revisited many times (Cobbled Wings, Spidersilk Net, Whispersilk Cloak at the premium end), but the original is built as an activated artifact rather than a worn item, which is why it taps and costs mana each turn instead of just sitting on a creature. That distinction matters: the carpet is a vehicle you pilot, not a cloak you wear, and the recurring activation cost is what keeps a colorless evasion-granter from trivially flying an entire ground-stalled board over the top. The split between tap cost and mana cost also means the carpet cannot grant flying twice in one turn, a friction that feels quaint now but reads as deliberate once you notice that nearly every modern equivalent either welds itself to one creature (equipment) or grants the keyword permanently. Flying Carpet is the proof-of-concept for that whole lineage, the early evidence that "any creature, sometimes, for a cost" was a workable knob before Wizards found cleaner ways to turn it.