Eternal Vengeance: Ancient Greeks Used 'Curse Tablets' to Torment Foes Beyond the Grave
As Haaretz reports, 30 such tablets were unearthed in a 38-foot, 2,500-year-old well that also contained other historical Greek artifacts, such as wine mixing vessels (krater), cooking pots, water-fetching clay pots, wooden artifacts, and more.
The most fascinating find from this trove, however, was no doubt the tablets. According to Jutta Stroszeck, director of the Kerameikos excavation under the German Archaeological Institute in Athens, these hex texts were an attempt to “invoke the gods of the underworld” to bring ill-will to whomever the curse was prescribed.
To read the tablets, scientists used a digital technique known as reflectance transformation imaging which makes even the tiniest inscriptions readable.
Jutta Stroszeck/German Archaeological InstituteA Grecian curse tablet in the shape of a liver found in Kerameikos where at least 30 such hexes have been discovered.
Based on ancient texts found in Cyprus in the 1930s, curses varied on whether the victim was living or dead. To curse a living enemy, one needed to place their hex tablet inside the tomb of a fresh corpse that died prematurely or under untimely circumstances. Such corpses included unmarried persons, casualties of war, or children.
The belief was that this corpse, unable to complete a “full life cycle,” could carry the curse from the living world to the underworld.
Such hexes from the Classical period (480-323 BC) have been discovered in tombs before but rarely inside a well. So why were these tablets found inside one?
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