Curse tablets

A curse tablet or binding spell (Latin: tabella defixionis, defixio; Greek: κατάδεσμος katadesmos) is a type of curse found throughout the Greco-Roman world, in which someone would ask the gods, place spirits, or the deceased to perform an action on a person or object, or otherwise compel the subject of the curse.

These texts were typically scratched on very thin sheets of lead in tiny letters, then often rolled, folded, or pierced with nails. These bound tablets were then usually placed beneath the ground: either buried in graves or tombs, thrown into wells or pools, sequestered in underground sanctuaries, or nailed to the walls of temples. Tablets were also used for love spells and, when used in this manner they were placed inside the home of the desired target. They are sometimes discovered along with small dolls or figurines (sometimes inaccurately referred to as "Voodoo dolls"), which may also be pierced by nails. The figurines resembled the target and often had both their feet and hands bound. Curse tablets also included hair or pieces of clothing. This is especially the case in love spells, which calls for “hair from the head of the love target.” Some love spells have even been discovered “folded around some hair,” probably to bind the spell itself. “Not all tablets included a personal name, but it is clear especially in the Roman period, that tablets were sometimes prepared in advance, with space left for inserting the names provided by paying customers."

The texts on curse tablets are typically addressed to infernal or liminal gods such as Pluto, Charon, Hecate, and Persephone, sometimes via the mediation of a dead person (probably the corpse in whose grave the tablet was deposited). Some texts do not invoke the gods, however, but merely list the targets of the curse, the crimes or conditions upon which the curse is valid, and/or the intended ill to befall them. Some tablets are inscribed with nothing more than the names of the targets, leading to the supposition that an oral spell may have accompanied the manufacture of the curse. The texts on the tablets were not always curses; tablets were also used to help the dead. Those at whose grave sites these were placed had usually died at a very young age or in a violent manner, and the tablet was supposed to help lay their souls to rest in spite of their untimely deaths. The language of those texts that do give context is often concerned with justice, either listing the target's crimes in great detail, handing over responsibility for their punishment to the gods, using indefinite grammar ("whoever committed this crime"), or conditional ("if he is guilty"), or even future conditional ("if he ever breaks his word").. Frequently, such curse tablets are also inscribed with additional, otherwise meaningless "curse" words such as Bazagra, Bescu, or Berebescu, seemingly in order to lend them a kind of supernatural efficacy.

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