'Curse tablets' found in 2,500-year-old Greek well

Thwarted by a new law from placing their hexes in tombs of the untimely dead, Athenians sought a new avenue to the underworld gods.

Thirty lead tablets engraved with curses have been discovered at the bottom of a 2,500 year old well in ancient Athens. Discovered in the area of Kerameikos, ancient Athens’ main burial ground, the small tablets invoked the gods of the underworld in order to cause harm to others.

These curses were ritual texts, usually scratched on small lead objects. “The person that ordered a curse is never mentioned by name, only the recipient,” observes Dr. Jutta Stroszeck, director of the Kerameikos excavation on behalf of the German Archaeological Institute in Athens.

Before the discovery of the 30 specimens in the well, dozens of curses from the classical period (480-323 B.C.E.) had been found mainly in tombs of dead people who had died in an untimely manner and were therefore thought suitable to carry the spell to the underworld. One had also been found in another well. But there was good reason for the transition of ill-will from graves to wells in ancient Athens. 

Forbidden magic

Apparently, there’s a reason the hexes were in the well. According to Cicero (De Legibus II 66), Demetrios of Phaleron, who ruled Athens in 317-307 B.C.E. enacted legislation to govern the management of tombs. He also created a new magistrate’s office to oversee adherence to the law: et huic procurationi certum magistratum praefecerat.

“Black arts” were frowned on in Athens to begin with, and with the new law governing the cemetery, hexes couldn’t just be placed in tombs any more, as had been the habit (35 had been found in the graves of Kerameikos, in previous excavations).

So, ill-wishers by the last years of the fourth century B.C.E. had to find other points of contact with the underworld gods, Stroszeck explains. It seems they came up with the stratagem of covertly tossing their curses into wells.

Oval lead "coffin" with a spell against Pytheas et al., ordered by an Pytheas' opponent in an Athenian law court

Avenue to the underworld

The well is ten meters deep and at its bottom, the archaeologists found a built-in pedimented niche bout a meter in height, made of limestone.

It is true that the denizens of Athens would never see it, but it wasn’t for them. It was dedicated to the well’s water nymph.

“Water, and in particular drinking water, was sacred,” Stroszeck says. “In Greek religion, it was protected by nymphs, who could become very mischievous when their water was treated badly.”

To appease these emotionally precarious godlets, offerings such as miniature vessels containing liquids and other gifts were thrown into in the water.

Waters in rivers and wells, both protected by nymphs, was believed to provide direct access to the underworld, as Dr. Stroszeck says. The belief was that throwing the curse into a well would activate it.

The 30 new tablets have been documented using reflectance transformation imaging, an digital technique that enables even the smallest inscriptions on lead to be read. The archaeologists hope to ultimately learn the name of the nymph, the nature of the curses and whether the targets of the hexes were any of the famous Athenians living in the city during the late fourth century B.C.E.

The place of the living and the dead

The Kerameikos graves from the Classical period were ornate, marked with stelai, reliefs, sculpted animals, or marble vases. Grave markers in Hellenistic times were much simpler. In any case, this area was characterized by transition: from urban to rural land, and from the city of the living to the realm of the dead.

“In such areas, the presence of divine and the supernatural were experienced intensively, which is why cult and mantic (prophetic) activities are dense there,” Stroszeck told Haaretz.

Why would the ancient Athenians place their curses in graves anyway? Because of the superstition that the souls of certain types of dead remained active around the tombs for a while after death, making them suitable bearers of the curses to the netherworld, where hopefully the chthonic gods would do the curser’s bidding.

Inscriptions found at ancient Kourion in Cyprus in the 1930s give precise instructions on how cursing was to be done. A tablet hexing a person very much alive had to be put in the tomb of the fresh corpse of a person who died prematurely – having failed to complete the “normal” life cycle, such as a child or an unmarried person; or a person who died by violence, like murder victims or war casualties, Stroszeck says. As their souls were believed to be “unquiet,” they could carry messages between the underworld and the mortal sphere.

All 35 curse tablets from tombs of the Kerameikos cemetery were situated at the necropolis’ borders, including in the children’s necropolis and in a polyandrion, a communal grave for fallen soldiers.

Love 'n' hate: Curse against the newlywed Glykera, focusing on her vulva, by someone jealous of her marriage

Final nail in the coffin

There seemed to have been four main types of reasons to curse someone: to win a lawsuit (by cursing the opponent’s tongue and hands, for example); for business purposes, for instance cursing metalsmiths, bankers, prostitutes and pimps; to win athletic contests; and – of course – because of love and hate.

The norm was to hire a professional curse writer, who was believed to possess supernatural powers and would know the requisite procedures and spells.

The completed curse tablet was folded up, pierced with an iron nail (defixio), and was sometimes nailed to the wooden coffin of the deceased conveyer.

And then there were the curses that weren’t done in secret. One of Athens’ most infamous sons, the general Alcibiades, was cursed very much in public.

Alcibiades had been a disciple of Socrates and was known for adopting the customs of whatever places he visited. For instance, in Sparta he was renowned for his cold baths and drinking black broth; in Thrace he was reportedly always drunk; and in Athens he became an orator who deliberately pronounced his r’s as l’s, since in this city, it was considered virtuous to lisp.

However, the day after his election as the admiral of an Athenian expeditionary force to Sicily during the Peloponnesian War, it so happened that the citizens of Athens discovered that the stone genitalia of the city’s hermes (rectangular boundary stones featuring a phallus and a head) had been broken off. Rumor spread that Alcibiades and his drunken companions were responsible for the vile deed. When the news reached Alcibiades, he became so afraid that he fled to Sparta and turned traitor. This merited him to be publically cursed in Athens.

Another person with the ill fortune to be publically cursed was Cassandros, one of Alexander the Great’s generals. The tablet cursing him was found inside a well near the Dipylon, the main gate of Athens and the principal point of entry of everyone in the city.

Although the curse tablet was cleverly deposited so that Cassandros would be cursed when he made his first public appearance upon entering Athens, the spell seemed to have had little effect on him. He died a natural death, unlike many of his Macedonian peers, who were mostly either poisoned or killed in battle.

Curse tablet in the shape of a liver, Kerameikos

A stroke of bad luck

One has to wonder why a civilization that developed philosophy, science and logic would stoop to black magic. The answer may be very concrete, and may date back to the mid fifth century B.C.E. at the time of the dedication of the Parthenon atop the acropolis, the acme of the ambitious building program on that hill at the initiative of the Athenian statesman Pericles.

The construction of the Parthenon met with a fair amount of opposition. Some felt, not without reason, that it was not right to use the federal (union) treasury for municipal purposes in Athens.

Pericles answered that as long as Athens was fulfilling its defense obligations, it owed no accounting to its allies over its use of the tribute money.

But the criticism did not ebb, and Pericles was attacked both by satirists and in the general assembly. During a famous speech by Thucydides, son Melesias, against Pericles construction program at the Pnyx, the meeting place of the Athenian assembly, Thucydides managed to incite passions of the assembly against his political opponent –but in the middle of his speech his jaw suddenly dropped and he had to leave the platform. Probably he had been struck by stroke, but to the people it looked like Thucydides had been effectively cursed. This incident could explain the sudden increase of curse tablets in the Kerameikos during the 5th century B.C.E.

haaretz

Sumerian Goddess Inanna (Ishtar)

"My father gave me the heavens,
 gave me the earth,                  
 I am Inanna!

 Kingship he gave me,
 queenship he gave me,
 waging of battle and attack he gave me,
 the floodstorm he gave me,
 the hurricane he gave me!

 The heavens he set as a crown upon my head,
 the earth he set as sandals on my feet,
 a holy robe he wrapped around my body,
 a holy scepter he placed in my hand.

 The gods are sparrows, I am a falcon."

Inanna is among the most important deities and the most important goddess in the Mesopotamian pantheon. She is primarily known as the goddess of sexual love but is equally prominent as the goddess of warfare. In her celestial aspect, Inanna is the planet Venus, the morning and the evening star.

Ishtar is the East Semitic, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna, and is the cognate for the goddess Astarte.

The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar. The roof and doors of the gate were of cedar, according to the dedication plaque.

Through the gate ran the Processional Way, which was lined with walls covered in lions (about 120 of them) on blue glazed bricks. She was associated with, and often shown in the company of, a lion.

Inanna figures in various myths and epics, including The Epic of Gilgamesh. She got Enki drunk and tricked him into bestowing many attributes and powers upon her. In the myth The Elevation of Inanna, Enki, An and Enlil all give their powers to Inanna, making her the Queen of the Universe.

Inanna is a femme fatale whose lovers always seem to come to grief. She is impatient, impetuous, and demanding. Gilgamesh risked death when he spurned her advances, comparing her to a back door that would let cold air into the house.

The original Dance of the Seven Veils was Inannaís descent into the Underworld, her sister Ereshkigalís realm, where she was gradually stripped naked as she passed through the seven gates. First went her crown, next earrings, then necklace, breast pins, belt of birthstones, then bracelets and finally her gown.

No acts of procreation took place on earth while Inanna was in the Underworld.

When she discovered that her only way out was in exchange for someone else, she betrayed Damuzi into taking her place. Inanna's time in the Underworld is a myth of the lunar cycle, Damuzi's a myth of the seasons.

Magic in Ancient Mesopotamia

Ancient Mesopotamia was a vast region in Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system which has become known as the ‘cradle of civilization’ due to the huge number of feats the culture achieved. Agriculture, animal herding, and domestication had developed there by 8000 years ago. 

Magick and religion for Ancient Mesopotamians were inseparable parts of the same whole, because both were seen as the link between the physical reality and the subtle spheres of existence.

It can be difficult to grasp Mesopotamian magic as a cultural concept. Steeped in the philosophical traditions of Western dualism, we often view magic in a binary relation to religion, yet no such distinction existed in Mesopotamia. For people living in ancient Iraq and the imperial peripheries in Syria, Anatolia, and Iran during the first millennium B.C., magic was a part of everyday life. Far from being considered irrational, it was the guiding principle by which Mesopotamians understood various natural phenomena and their positive and negative consequences. For example, celestial omens could reveal a king to be in imminent danger, or portend fortuitous circumstances in war. 

Magic could also be used to combat the negative actions of ghosts, demons, and human sorcerers, as well as protect against the curse that resulted from unknowingly committing a sin, and thus losing the favor of one’s personal god or goddess. The responsibilities of a Mesopotamian magician could come under the umbrella of a number of specialties that we might refer to as magical, scientific, medical, literary, and religious.

A deep insight into the Mesopotamian civilization has been gained from the hundreds of thousands of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, one of the earliest forms of writing, that they left.

Maqlú, which means ‘burning’, is a work composed around 700 BC spanning nine tablets. 

It details a ceremony which was supposed to thwart and drive away evil magic, protect the intended target from the bad magic, and weaken the person who was responsible for casting the malevolent spell or curse. The first eight tablets feature almost 100 incantations, and the ninth gives directions for the ritual. It is a work intended to aide an exorcist and his patient.

Maqlú, along with several other Mesopotamian texts, paint a picture of a society where magic was practiced both legitimately and openly, and illegitimately and maliciously.

It is implied that evil magic worked as the practitioners tricked the Gods into believing they were assisting a genuine need. The ritual in Maqlú was supposed to work by revealing the deception to the Gods so they would reverse what they had done to help the evil doer. But we can also build up a picture of a society in which ‘good’ magic was an everyday part of life for many people.

Although many people believed in or even practiced rudimentary magic, there were also professional magicians in ancient Mesopotamia. These professional magicians would have been specialists in a particular field of magic. Some would have been specialists in divination, while others would have been professional exorcists. As with some other ancient societies, many of those who worked in a field that was not fully understood were considered to be magicians; so scientists, doctors, and astronomers were placed alongside mystics and exorcists.

It was also possible to specialize within these fields. One set of mystics who specialized in a particular form of divination were the bārû, performed divination by consulting the livers of animals and also by observation of the flight of birds.

The liver was considered the source of the blood and hence the basis of life itself. The liver was divided into sections, with each section representing a particular deity.

(Picture: Divinatory livers, clay models for the training of soothsayers, in the Louvre).

Mesopotamian divination was not just divination, and not limited in development to a type of superstition, but was developed to the extent to which it was in fact a science.

One magical tradition which was quite widespread in Mesopotamia is that of the herbalist. Herbalists had access to long lists of plants which gave the names of plants, how they were to be prepared and what ailments they were to be used for and in what way. 

The herbalists did not only have to know his herbs but also when best to harvest them and had to observe the correct rituals when doing so. Also, there was a correct time when to administer the medicine to the patient. This timing was usually connected to celestial phenomena.

Ritual prescriptions included time and mode of harvesting, for example:

Look for a gourd which grows alone in the plain;

when the sun has gone down,

cover your head with a kerchief,

cover the gourd too,

draw a magic circle with flour around it,

and in the morning, before the sun comes out,

pull it up from its location,

take its root.

Often, the plant or its root may not be exposed to the sun or daylight at any time. The plant may also be addressed in speaking, asking it to give up its life or part of its substance for benign purposes.

Plants were seen to come in two varieties: male and female. This is not connected to any actual sex, but rather refers to potency, with 'male' usually referring to greater potency.

Plants growing in remote places such as on mountains may be seen as more potent than easily collectable plants. In addition, plants on mountains are nearer to the stars and thus more potent.

The role of stones in Babylonian magic is comparable to the role of herbs. Stones can have magical properties which are also collected on long lists.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art  there is a cuneiform tablet with a list of 303 magical stones dating to mid- to late 1st millennium B.C. (picture left).

This multi-columned tablet contains a list of stones with their magical associations and medical purposes.

Stone, precious or not, could be used for figurines and statues who then had magical properties (e. g. guarding a place). Various metals such as gold and silver were also considered imbued with such properties. More often, however, stones were used for amulets on a piece of string or tendon (which in itself might be part of a charm) or could be tied onto the body with a strip of cloth, usually in the area which was supposed to benefit from the influence of the stone. Thus, a stone supposed to remedy stomach cramps might be worn in a bandage around the hips. Stones could be used as remedies and as prophylactic means.

Magnetite is known as a stone evoking the truth; he who carries it is obliged to speak nothing but the truth. Stones may be male and female just as herbs; this applies especially to the tone of colour, paler colours being female.

The power of the stones is supposed to be derived from the stars. Amulet stones are exposed to starlight over night to be 'charged'.

Two concepts are inseparable from all kinds of magic in Mesopotamian culture: the gods and the stars. All magic is connected to one, the other or both.

Magic rituals were often connected to the invocation of the gods who were likened to star constellations observed in the night sky, the planets, or the sun and moon. 

Anu, Enlil and Ea are represented by the whole sky, having their three regions staked out on the night sky the so-called Paths of Anu, Enlil and Ea respectively; Venus is Inanna / Ishtar in her female aspect as morning star and goddess of love, Mercury is the same god(dess) in her male aspect as evening star and god of war; Mars is the destroyer and god of pestilence Nergal; the Moon is Sin / Nanna, the sun is Shamash, and both are male gods; Marduk was Jupiter. The names for gods and planets can be used interchangeably.

Tower of human skulls in Mexico casts new light on Aztecs

A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure.

Archaeologists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments in the cylindrical edifice near the site of the Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City.

The tower is believed to form part of the Huey Tzompantli, a massive array of skulls that struck fear into the Spanish conquistadores when they captured the city under Hernan Cortes, and mentioned the structure in contemporary accounts.

Historians relate how the severed heads of captured warriors adorned tzompantli, or skull racks, found in a number of Mesoamerican cultures before the Spanish conquest.

But the archaeological dig in the bowels of old Mexico City that began in 2015 suggests that picture was not complete.

"We were expecting just men, obviously young men, as warriors would be, and the thing about the women and children is that you'd think they wouldn't be going to war," said Rodrigo Bolanos, a biological anthropologist investigating the find.

"Something is happening that we have no record of, and this is really new, a first in the Huey Tzompantli," he added.

Raul Barrera, one of the archaeologists working at the site alongside the huge Metropolitan Cathedral built over the Templo Mayor, said the skulls would have been set in the tower after they had stood on public display on the tzompantli.

Roughly six meters in diameter, the tower stood on the corner of the chapel of Huitzilopochtli, Aztec god of the sun, war and human sacrifice. Its base has yet to be unearthed.

There was no doubt that the tower was one of the skull edifices mentioned by Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes in the 1521 conquest of Mexico, Barrera said.

In his account of the campaign, de Tapia said he counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli. Barrera said 676 skulls had so far been found, and that the number would rise as excavations went on.

The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples performed ritualistic human sacrifices as offerings to the sun.

Sourse: reuters