Curse Tablets

The recent find of dozens of curse tablets in a well in the Kerameikos excavation puts the whole Athenian cursing habit into perspective: while during the fifth and fourth century BC curse tablets were mainly deposited in tombs, the bulk of finds from the Early Hellenistic periods onward comes from wells. It is proposed that this is related to the change in the necropoleis caused by the law of Demetrius of Phaleron in 3017/307 BC, who also installed an institution to control the new legislation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine an interesting case of aggressive magic dated to the IV century AD and discovered in the Roman sanctuary of the goddess Anna Perenna. The poppet represents a man trapped in the coils of a snake, who was additionally attached to a defixio and enclosed in a series of three miniature leaden cinerary urns. The ensemble was finally deposited within the cistern of the fountain, where the victim was consecrated to the goddess and her nymphs.

Max Weber said that the curse of the poor is the weapon of democracy. In 2011 a lead curse tablet inscribed in Greek was discovered in an immense peristyle building in Jerusalem from the late Roman period. A certain Kyrilla deployed the 24 line tablet against her adversary Iennys (Iannēs) which invokes Greek, Mesopotamian, and Gnostic gods of the underworld to strike seven vulnerabilities of her opposition. " I strike and strike down and nail down the tongue, the eyes, the wrath, the ire, the anger, the procrastination, the opposition of Iennys… " This preemptory juridical malediction, inscribed by a professional, parallels imprecations from Kourion, Cyprus and was probably motivated by a legal or business dispute. Kore-Persephone executes the curse, reopening the possibility of a Kore cult in Jerusalem. The discovery of this text and others like it raises broader implications for how the diffusion of curses influenced legal and economic mechanisms in Mediterranean cultures. The force behind performative speech is that the proper person utters appropriate words in specific social contexts. Yet written curse texts like this one notoriously complicate matters, blurring magic and religious practices, private and public enacted rituals, oral and written curse acts, and conventional and unconventional juridical procedures. Ancient blessings and curses are often delineated as magical phenomena, but the relationship between magic and religion has historically been notoriously slippery to pin down. Some argue that the dichotomy between magic and religion is merely a product of western monotheism, the enlightenment, or both…little more than a semantic trap to avoid at all costs. James Frazer famously drove a wedge between magic and religion. For Frazer, magic was a kind of religious parasite, a wholesale perversion of a great religious tradition, involving rituals driven by completely natural forces that emerged from a primitive worldview. 1 Religion, on the other hand, emerged from the supernatural world of faith. Seasoned specialists and general readers alike can immediately detect problems with this simplistic dichotomy. Max Weber reduced somewhat the absolute separation of magic and religion, but still held to the belief that magic and religion were opposites. 2 Marcel Mauss proposed a social Durkheimian definition of magic, where any rite that is not a part of an organized cult is considered privatized folk religion and thus derives from the realm of magic.

The dissertation thesis titled Animals in magical context in literary and epigraphic sources in the area of Roman Empire is centred around the research of the presence of animal ingredients in the ancient magic within the three types of sources - Greek magical papyri, curse tablets and the literary work of Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis. The result of this research is the list of all animal ingredients present in the texts of Greek magical papyri and within the texts of curse tablets, their analysis and comparison with the work of Pliny the Elder. As the part of the thesis there is also included a corpus of selected texts of Greek magical papyri with original slovak translation (Addendum 1) and the table with the list of all animal ingredients (Addendum 2).

The objective of the present study is to develop a pharmaceutically
stable,  cost  effective  and  quality  improved  robust  formulation  of
Valsartan Immediate Release tablets. The aim of work is related to
the  formulation  and  evaluation  of  10mg  of  dispersible  tablet.
Valsartan  belongs  to  a  class  of  antihypertensive  agents  called
angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs). Total nine formulations
were  prepared  by  direct  compression  method  in  which  the
concentration of the superdisintegrants is varied to evaluate the effect
on the disintegration time of valsartan mouth dissolving tablets. The
superdisintegrants,  involved  in  preparation  are  Sodium  starch
glycolate, Avicel PH 102, Low HPC. The prepared batches of tablets
were  evaluated  for  micromeritic  parameters,  weight  variation,
hardness,  friability,  wetting  time,  In  vitro  dispersion  time,  drug
content and In vitro dissolution studies. In Formulations F1, F2, F3,
releases 89.83%, 91.10%, 96.20%, respectively, Formulation F4, F5,
and F6, which release 85.11%, 88.71% and 90.44% respectively and.
Formulation  F7,  F8,  F9,  releases  78.26%,  82.26%,  85.31%,
respectively,  at  end  of  15  minutes.  Amongst  all  the  developed
formulations, valsartan mouth dissolving tablets formulated by using
sodium starch glycolate as superdisintegrants, having hardness (3.7
Kg/cm
2
), Friability (0.1356 %), Drug Content (9.9250.067 mg). and
it  is  fulfilling  all  the  parameters.  It  has  shown  good  In  vitro
disintegration time (8.00  1.023 sec), In vitro dispersion time (14.33
 1.24 sec), compared to other superdisintegrants. The optimized
formulation  (F3)  containing  Sodium  starch  glycolate,  as
superdisintegrant  is  producing  best  results  compared  to  other
formulations.

Roman curse tablets represent personal and private prayers inscribed on sheets of lead or lead-alloy and cast into the Sacred Spring of Aquae Sulis at the Roman baths complex in the city of Bath, United Kingdom. The tablets range in date from the 2nd to the late 4th century AD. The Roman Curse Tablets were discovered in the late 1970s.

The Roman Baths in the City of Bath World Heritage Site in the United Kingdom is the origin of the well-preserved remains of one of the outstanding religious spas of antiquity and the greatest healing shrine of Roman Britain.

This study seeks to review the history, content, and application of some of the mentioned tablets with a glance over the mythology.

There are altogether about six hundred Latin curse texts, most of which are inscribed on lead tablets. The extant Latin defixiones are attested from the 2 nd cent. BCE to the end of the 4 th and beginning of the 5 th century. However, the number of extant tablets is certainly not final, which is clear from the new findings in Mainz recently published by Blänsdorf (2012, 34 tablets), 1 the evidence found in the fountain dedicated to Anna Perenna in Rome 2012, (26 tablets and other inscribed magical items), 2 or the new findings in Pannonia (Barta 2009). 3 The curse tablets were addressed exclusively to the supernatural powers, so their authors usually hid them very well to be banished from the eyes of mortals; not to speak of the randomness of the archaeological findings. Thus, it can be assumed that the preserved defixiones are only a fragment of the overall ancient production. Remarkable diversities in cursing practice can be found when comparing the preserved defixiones from particular provinces of the Roman Empire and their specific features, as this contribution wants to show.

This article sets out to reconsider the history of curse tablets in the ancient Mediterranean world as the history of a technology, one marked by episodes of innovation and appropriation. Attempts to write a history in terms of diffusion or of the spread of classical ideas or of magic have failed to convince, and most recent studies focus on the particularities of specific tablets or groups of tablets. This article argues that, if human and object agency are taken into account, it is possible to explain both the discontinuities in the history of curse tablets and also the shape of their thousand-year history. Curse tablets emerge as a technology the affordances of which allowed it to be put to many uses in many different social locations formed by the complex and shifting cultural contours of antiquity.

Defixiones, also known as curse tablets, are one of the most revealing sources for ancient magico-religious practices. Born of rancour, anger, desire, love, envy, or just out of desperation, curse tablets were a strategy for obtaining ‘individual justice’ for those who could not accomplish their purposes through the available means, due to a lack of knowledge, power or legal/economical resources. In this volume, the reader will find a detailed catalogue that discusses 535 curse tablets written in Latin and a wide range of local languages. The catalogue is preceded by a full introduction in which the main features of these inscriptions are discussed together with leading scholarship. Such a detailed yet global study of these texts sheds light on various aspects of curses that vary on a regional basis, thus showing how this magico-religious technology was not only adopted but also adapted in new and creative ways by the local populations throughout the Roman West.

This book is a comprehensive exploration of curse tablets in the Athenian legal domain. Drawing on sociological and critical theory, Zinon Papakonstantinou outlines a framework for the interaction between curse tablets and legalities, namely in both formal and informal manifestations of the legal sphere, in Classical Athens. By delving into the complex world of Athenian daily life and disputes, Papakonstantinou argues that Athenians involved in litigation deployed binding curses as polysemic acts of conflict management and information control. They also used them as transgressive transcripts that went beyond normative or legislative taxonomies. Further, Papakonstantinou demonstrates how Athenians acting in a self-assessing and long-term agential mode employed curse tablets strategically to advance their individual agenda and position in Athenian society.

As a result, Athenian legal curse tablets point to a conceptually malleable perception of “law” and “litigation” driven by utility and self-interest that clashed with claims to justice, the pursuit of the rule of law, and attitudes towards jurors articulated by litigants in Athenian forensic orations.

In 2016, about thirty new curse tablets were found in the Athenian Kerameikos, most of them in the late-4th to early-3rd-century BCE layers of an ancient well in the courtyard of the Kerameikos bathhouse. Before this discovery, the majority of curse tablets from the site belonged to the 5th and 4th century BCE and were found in and around a limited number of tombs and precincts, all situated on the fringes of the Kerameikos necropolis and next to crossroads. As far as we can tell, the corpses buried in the tombs that contained curses fall into certain categories mentioned in ancient sources: people whose course of life was somehow unfinished (aôroi), such as children and young adults; people who had not been properly buried for lack of money (apôroi); people who were violently murdered or had undergone maschalismos (biaiothanatoi); and war casualties buried in a mass grave (polyandrioi). Among the 5th-and 4th-century examples, only a few were found in layers of ancient streets or in public and private buildings. I propose that at the end of the 4th century BCE there was a general shift away from graves and toward wells for the deposition of curses, due to a law issued by Demetrios of Phaleron (317-307 BCE). Officers were installed at that time to ensure compliance with the new law; their presence must have made it far more difficult to perform magic rites on any tomb in Athens. From then on mostly, public wells were used for that purpose.

The article examines the various bindin0g formulas contained in the Oscan curse repertory consisting of 13 texts written on lead, to emphasize analogies and differences among these spells and those witnessed by defixiones belonging to other cultural traditions. The  author proposes several hypothesis for the comprehension of some Oscan forms.

This paper surveys nineteen lead curse tablets from the sanctuary of Magna Mater and Isis in Mainz, Germany. Written in Latin, these tablets seek the divine help of Magna Mater and other deities in rectifying perceived injustices. When theorizing about cursing practices at the site, I argue that we need to look to the in situ context of the curse tablets and consider the other ritual deposits made at the sanctuary. Accounting for the co-presence of votary items alongside curse tablets can significantly aid our understanding of how the curse authors at Mainz viewed their practice. I argue that votive cult provides a compelling framework for understanding cursing at Mainz and the role of place in these materials. The curses at Mainz suggest that those who utilized cursing at the site made a strong connection between the figures petitioned in the curses and the physical site of the temple. The connection between the temple locus and cursing is illustrated by the uniformity of cursing rituals, the thematic content of the petitioners’ requests, and the sites of tablet deposition. Because of the close connection between votive cult and cursing at the site, I argue from the evidence supplied by the curse tablets examined here that we need to reconsider our formulation of cursing as a deviant or marginal religious practice and instead recognize all the ways that it fell within normative religious habits in Roman antiquity.

Le defixiones nel mondo etrusco, in: Forme e strutture della religione nell’Italia mediana antica / Forms and Structures of Religion in Ancient Central Italy (Atti del III Convegno Internazionale sugli Antichi Umbri, Perugia-Gubbio, 21-25 settembre 2011), a cura di A. Ancillotti, A. Calderini, R. Massarelli (Studia Archaeologica, 215), Roma: «L'Erma» di Bretschneider, 2016, pp. 517-532.

Ovid's narrative of Apollo and Daphne introduces elements not apparent in earlier extant versions of the myth, such as the involvement of Cupid and his deployment of two distinct arrows, one golden that sets Apollo's passions aflame, and the other lead that makes Daphne averse to all male advances. The passion-averting arrow in particular is a curious addition to Cupid's arsenal. This paper will argue that the lead arrow can be better understood when viewed alongside the practices and discourses of ancient magic and medicine, especially the widespread use of lead for erotic defixiones, antaphrodisiacs, and even contraceptives.

The following paper explains the underlying religious context of the use of katadesmoi (binding tablets) from Classical Greek society. Elements of examination include oath ceremonies, literary sources for binding, the development and role of Hermes, beliefs concerning souls of the dead, and lastly an explanation of how katadesmoi relate to these elements. Using historical analysis supported by Classical texts, such as Homer's Odyssey and Aeschylus' Choephoria, this paper establishes that katadesmoi reflect classical Greek religious beliefs. The religious context of these tablets is important to this field of study because it is an under-researched connection between these two topics.

The article considers various aspects of the oscan cursing tablets, particularly it examines the binding formulae, the cursing typologies and the thematic classification of these texts, comparing them with cursing tablets pertaining to other cultural areas. It considers also the textual and linguistic peculiar aspects of the oscan corpus, setting it in the context of linguistic studies and the history of magic.

L’articolo prende in considerazione vari aspetti della tavolette di maledizione osche; in particolar modo si prendono in esame le formule esecratorie, le varie tipologie di maledizione e la classificazione contenutistica di questi testi, ponendoli a confronto con le defixiones pertinenti ad altre aree culturali. Si prendono, inoltre, in considerazione i peculiari aspetti linguistici e testuali del corpus documentario osco, contestualizzandoli nell’ambito degli studi linguistici e della storia della magia.

Anacardiumgum  derived  from  the  edible  seeds  of
Anacardiumoccidantale(family  Anacardiaceae) was evaluated for its binding  properties  at  a  concentration  of  5  %  w/w  and  10%  w/w  in Ibuprofen  tablets  with  official  starch  as  a  control.  A  comparative analysis showed that the granules bound with  Anacardiumgum were relatively  bigger and harder than the ones obtained with starch gum. The hardness,  disintegration time and dissolution rate increased with increase  in  concentration  of  Anacardiumgum.  Tablets  containing
10% w/w of  Anacardiumgum had a binding  capacity approximately twice that of starch with a dissolution rate of 58.5% after 30  min. The results obtained suggest that Anacardiumgum possesses potential as a commercial binding agent.

Abstract
This paper deals with the distribution of curse types and curse formulas and the specific features of the surviving Latin curse tablets in the various provinces of the Roman Empire in time and space. The Latin tabellae defixionum represent a special kind of epigraphic documents, the number of which has increased significantly over the last decades. A new modern corpus of Latin curse tablets was published by Amina Kropp, and a new category within the curse types has been recognized – the so-called prayers for justice. The analysis of these texts written on sheets of lead enables us to see the areas with specific connections, correspondences and differences in the content of the curse text, the frequency and types of used formulas, invoked deities and daemons, the application of magical words and special graphic features, which help us find out the relations between the curse type and the aim of the writer in the whole Latin curse tradition. This analysis of a total of 309 quite undamaged and intelligible curse texts tries to compare the possible relations between the curse formulas and the “bad wishes”, or targets of, the curse writers in the cases of curses and prayers for justice.

A study on personal religion in ancient Greece, focusing roughly on the classical period. The work looks specifically at the dedication of inscribed votive offerings, the visiting and use of oracles and seers, and at the use of curse tablets.

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Στο πρώτο μέρος της ομιλίας παρουσιάστηκαν τα είδη των καταδέσμων στον αρχαίο ελληνικό κόσμο και απαντήθηκαν κάποια βασικά ερωτήματα (ποιός γράφει, πού απευθύνονται, πού τοποθετούνται, ποιό είναι το τελετουργικό κ.λπ.). Στο δεύτερο μέρος παρουσιάστηκαν τρία μουσεία στις αίθουσες των οποίων εκτίθενται κατάδεσμοι (Εθνικό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο, Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Κεραμεικού, Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Χαλκίδας "Αρέθουσα") και συζητήθηκε το αφηγηματικό μουσειολογικό σκεπτικό ώστε να καταστεί πιο εύκολη η προσέγγιση των καταδέσμων (από επισκέπτες και ξεναγούς).

On the basis of the preserved evidence, corpse daemons were practically employed in two specific fields: in love magic and in chariot racing. In this respect, the material of our sources seems significant: in Egyptian papyri the daemons are primarily used in erotic magic, whereas in lead tablets they are meant to manipulate chariot races. The study examines all known occurrences of nekydaimones, analyz- ing their functions and names, whenever referred to in the sources.

Curse tablets have been found in the Athenian Kerameikos for more than 100 years now, but hitherto there was no comprehensive catalog of find circumstances that would allow for a concise overwiewand for conclusions. The article helps to fill this gap.  It also presents many Kerameikos curse tablets, including the recent finds from well B 34 , in both their forms: as found and as opened. The reading of the new tablets will be done by Sara Chiariini and Martin Dreher.