By Charlotte Spence
Curse tablets (also known as binding spells) are small inscriptions written by individuals to try and access the power of the restless dead and the gods in the ancient world...
Most of our surviving tablets are inscribed on lead owing to its durability. Other materials were also employed such as wax, pewter, bronze, paper, papyrus, selenite, and stone such as marble. These texts were written in Latin, Greek, Demotic Egyptian, Coptic, and Celtic. Our earliest tablets are from Selinus, Sicily, and date to the late sixth century BCE. As with much of the ancient world, judging an end date is tricky and there are definite examples from Egypt dating to the sixth century CE as well as possible examples dating as late as the ninth century CE. Curse tablets have been discovered in all of the modern countries surrounding the Mediterranean as well as Portugal, the UK, Germany, and Russia.
The distribution of tablets across such a wide geographical and chronological extent is something which particularly interests me. In our roughly 2,000 surviving examples we have the voices of ordinary men, women, slaves, freemen, pagans, Christians, men desiring men, and women desiring women. Our earliest surviving examples focus on binding elements of the victim, such as their tongues so that they cannot speak out at legal trials; which is where they get their name as ‘binding spells’ from. Quickly curse tablets begin to be used against business rivals, to curse athletes at sporting events (particularly chariot races and gladiator fights!), to call down divine justice (especially on thieves), and to help drag victims from their families to fulfil erotic desires. Their everyday concerns and bigger picture desires are carefully recorded for us and this direct link, and personal connection, to ancient individuals is incredibly interesting (if at times also horrifying)!
Despite the fact we have surviving magical handbooks, perhaps the most well-known being the Greek and Demotic Magical Papyri, and literary illusions to professionals selling curse tablets, such as this from Plato:
Beggar-priests and magicians go to the doors of the rich and persuade them that they have the power, acquired from the gods by sacrifices and incantations, to cure with pleasures and festivals any wrong done by the man himself or his ancestors, and that they will harm an enemy, a just man or an unjust man alike, for a small payment, if a man wishes it, since they persuade the gods, as they say, to serve them, by certain charms and binding spells.
The vast majority of our tablets were written by ancient individuals who were not professional scribes, nor did they have in-depth knowledge about complex demon names or special signs or words which would have ritual significance. In fact, a very large proportion of our surviving texts comprise merely of a list of names of the intended victims. This should, rightly, lead us to question any notions of an extremely low rate of literacy in the ancient world. To give just one example: there are just under 200 published tablets from the sacred springs at the temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath (all dated to between the second and fourt centuries CE), and none of them are written by the same person. So: in a relatively provincial location, at a point when the Roman Empire is dramatically changing, there were enough people with a confident grasp of Latin to compose detailed curses, such as this example:
Docilianus (son) of Brucerus [Brucetus?] to the most divine goddess Sulis. I curse him who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether man or woman, whether slave or free, that… the goddess Sulis inflict death upon… and not allow him sleep nor children now and in the future, until he has brought my hooded cloak to the temple of her divinity.
This text (Tab. Sul. 10) was probably written in the second century CE and was thrown into the sacred spring at Bath.
The aim of these tablets was to access the power of the gods or the restless dead (those who died before their time, those who died by violence, those who did not receive correct burial rites, and those who died before marriage). This was done in a variety of ways including directly invoking the gods and demanding that they carry out the curse, pleading with the gods in a supplicatory tone, using magical words (known as voces magicae), and using magical symbols (called charaktêres). There is huge variation in the different ways the gods and the dead were approached in these texts and there is no uniform sense as to exactly how a curse tablet should be written.
In this picture we can see that there are drawings of the horse-headed daimon Eulamon who is invoked to bring about sinister punishments. This tablet was probably produced by someone copying a recipe because they included ‘spell’ at the beginning of the second half of the inscription! It was deposited in a columbarium (most tablets were deposited in graves but many are also found at temples) near the Porta San Sebastiano, Rome and dates to the fourth century CE.
The text runs as follows:
EULAMON, restrain, OUSIRI OUSIRI APHI OUSIRI MNE PHRI,… and Archangels, in the name of the underworld one, so that, just as I entrust to you this wicked and lawless and accursed Cardelus, whom his mother Fulgentia bore, so may you bring him to a bed of punishment, to be punished with an evil death, and die within five days. Quickly! Quickly!
Spell: You, Phrygian goddess, nymph goddess Eidonea NEOI EKATOIKOUSE, I invoke you by…, so that you may aid me and restrain and hold in check Cardelus and bring him to a bed of punishment, to be punished with an evil d
eath, to come to an horrible condition, him whom his mother Fulgentia bore. And you, holy EULAMON and holy Characters, and holy assistants, those on the right and those on the left, and holy Symphonia [?]. These things have been written on this
(EULSMON, restrain, OUSIRI OUSIRI APHI OUSIRI MNE PHRI) tablet made from a cold-water pipe, so that, just as I entrust to you this impious and accursed and ill-fated Cardelus whom his mother Fulgentia bore, so that you may so restrain him and bring him to a bed of punishment, to be punished and to die an evil death, Cardelus whom his mother Fulgentia bore, within five days, because I invoke you by the power that renews itself, the one that restrains the… (voces magicae follow).
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