Curses!
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Curses!
Ancient artifacts that afflicted enemies and protected people from evil
These days, we don’t curse like they used to.
I’m not talking about four-letter words here; I’m talking about actual curses — maledictions, powerful words and phrases that invoke supernatural wrath against an enemy or opponent.
We still have the remnants of curses in our language, but they’ve lost all their power. If I yell, a little archaically, “Goddamn you!” at somebody who cuts me off in traffic, I’m not really invoking the almighty’s wrath against the offender, asking God to make them burn for eternity in the fires of Hell. I’m just making a generic expression of frustration against an idiot who doesn’t know how to drive.
But for much of human history, words didn’t just have the power to offend — they had the power to change lives. People believed that there were certain words and phrases that, if uttered or written in the right settings by the right people, could destroy a person. And there were certain words, phrases, or objects that could ward off such catastrophes.
This week, let’s take a look at ancient magical objects — some of them designed to curse one’s enemies, others created to protect the bearer from misfortune.
If I asked you to think about curses in the ancient world, you’d probably think of one that didn’t really exist. Many people know about the “mummy’s curse,” which supposedly brought misfortune to people who disturbed prominent Egyptian graves (and has propelled the plots of some popular movies). This is a fun little idea, and there’s tons of trashy content on the internet about it, but the fact of the matter is that there was no curse inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb or most others. As museum curator Dan Potter writes, the “tomb warnings” we find in Egyptian burial sites are less “the mummy’s curse” and more “the mummy’s gentle reproach.”
This doesn't mean that ancient Egyptians didn’t issue curses or work to protect themselves from them, though. This “donation stela” from 804 BCE memorializes the gift of some land to a temple. It threatens a curse against anyone who would keep the land from its religious purpose:
Boundary markers in Mesopotamia, too, often contained curses. This marker, or kudurru, memorializes a Babylonian governor’s gift around 1100 BCE of some land to a man named Gula-eresh. It warns that people who interfere with the gift or mess with the marker will anger the gods, who will “curse him with an evil curse that cannot be loosed.”
This Hittite stele depicts a man named Laramas who ruled a small kingdom around 1000 BCE. It curses anyone who erases his name: “let him surrender his power and…his head, house, wife, child…”
Many ancient curses were more specific than these — they were aimed at individual people who had angered the person issuing the curse. The Greeks and Romans were the champions of the individual curse.
The Romans often used “curse tablets” — they would inscribe a curse on a thin lead sheet and then roll it up, sometimes wearing it like an amulet. Some of them were quite crude, containing only a couple of words, like this one found in the Netherlands:
These tablets were pierced with nails, often many times, which may have been believed to amplify the curse’s power. You can see the nail in this tablet, which cursed escaped slaves:
A cache of over 100 Roman curse tablets — defixiones, in Latin— was found in Bath, England. Many of them invoked curses against people who had engaged in petty thefts in the baths there.
These tablets followed a formula — the aggrieved party would “transfer” their stolen goods to a god, usually Sulis Minerva. Then they would ask Minerva to do something terrible to the person who stole their (her) money or bathing suit:
“Do not allow sleep or health to him who has done me wrong, whether man or woman or whether slave or free unless he reveals himself and brings those goods to your temple.”
“Docimedis has lost two gloves and asks that the thief responsible should lose their minds [sic] and eyes in the goddess’ temple.”
“…so long as someone, whether slave or free, keeps silent or knows anything about it, he may be accursed in (his) blood, and eyes and every limb and even have all (his) intestines quite eaten away if he has stolen the ring or been privy (to the theft).”
These curses are kind of funny, but some of the ancient curse documents reveal heartbreak. The “curse of Artemesia,” a papyrus document from Greek Egypt, was clearly commissioned by a woman who was suffering. Her child had died, and the child’s father would not pay for a proper burial — something of profound importance in Hellenistic society. She asks the gods to deprive her (former?) partner and his family of funeral rites.
Not all ancient curses were words on paper. Excavators in Egypt found these creepy figures, which had names of enemies painted on them in red paint. Dozens of them were placed near a pharaoh’s tomb, perhaps with the goal of using the powers of the pharaoh to punish the named men.
The ancient Greeks sometimes made kolossoi, statuettes of the people they were trying to punish. These figurines were thought to restrain enemies; the tiny dolls usually have their hands bound behind their back. They’re sometimes pierced through with needles or nails — not to cause pain but to incapacitate or weaken that part of the victim’s body.
One of the most famous Greek examples was found in the Kerameikos cemetery of ancient Athens, apparently to weaken someone’s enemies in a trial:
One of the most famous (and disturbing) Roman examples is this 4th-century CE female figure pierced by 13 strategically placed pins:
So what could you do to avoid being cursed or otherwise afflicted by the punishment of the gods? Well, in most ancient societies, you’d need to acquire some magical items to protect yourself.
Many Egyptians commissioned “magic wands” fashioned from hippopotamus tusks. These kept the dead safe on their journey to the afterlife and protected children from harm. The wands often showed gods relevant to the person’s stage of life — the gods of birth and childhood, for example — holding big, scary knives that would apparently intimidate any evil spirits.
Here’s one from around 1700 BCE:
And another from around the same time:
Some Romans protected themselves a little more colorfully — this amulet protected someone from the evil eye by combining male genitalia and an insulting gesture:
For ancient people, magic — with all of the possibilities and dangers that it represented— was real. They took action against their enemies and protected themselves from harm with physical objects.
Whether you were planting a boundary marker with a supernatural warning, inscribing your rival’s name on a tablet, or just wearing a bronze dick around your neck, you needed to do your best to make sure the gods were helping you and hurting your enemies.
Curses!
A remarkable invention to protect your things without actively guarding it.
At some point, you should get into the remarkable amount of phallic symbols the Romans used. They were obsessed with dicks!