Twenty-one lead curse tablets have been found within the graves of an Gallo-Roman period cemetery in Orléans, France. One grave relationship to the second half of the 2nd century was notably notable for having a curse written in Gaulish. The language was used for hundreds of years after the Roman conquest, however only a few written examples of it survive, making this curse pill extraordinarily uncommon.
The Gallo-Roman necropolis was unearthed in a 2022 excavation on the website of the 18th century Porte Madeleine Hospital. The burial floor was in use from the top of the first century till the start of the third. Archaeologists found greater than 60 burials lined up alongside a wall. The deceased have been all grownup males and all inhumed. There have been no girls or kids and no cremations. This uncommon specificity suggests the burial floor was used solely by a specific group, maybe members of a single occupation. It was in grave F2199 {that a} tightly rolled lead pill was discovered positioned between the legs of the deceased.
Defixio (that means curse in Latin) tablets have been standard all through the Greco-Roman world even effectively into the Christian period. Individuals who had grudges towards rivals in love and enterprise and extremely generally, rival sports activities groups, would write incantations asking underworld deities to punish their enemies. Lead was probably the most generally used medium. It’s malleable, simply inscribed and simply rolled up. It additionally had symbolic significance because the chilly, darkish steel was thought of to have a connection to the chthonic or underworld deities appealed to in curses.
The defixio in grave F2199 was folded after which rolled up. The lead sheet may be very skinny, and after having been rolled up tight for two,000 years, it wanted cautious therapy to unfold it, take away corrosion and consolidate the floor with a clear-coating that may make it attainable for researchers to review it with out damaging it. Marks and letters have been seen, inscribed on the comfortable floor of the lead with a stylus, however they have been too faint to decipher with the bare. Researchers employed RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) to focus on the inscription in raking mild. From these pictures, specialists have been capable of learn the Latin cursive script. They discovered it was written largely in Gaulish phrases with some mortgage phrases from Greek and Latin.
Translating Gaulish just isn’t simple, as it’s an extinct language poorly represented on the archaeological document. It requires comparisons to different historic Celtic languages like Previous Irish and Previous Breton to give you believable translations of some phrases. The work on the curse pill continues to be happening, however the first proposed translation reads (authentic textual content in italics):
ib r…mi [m]arte rigisamu | a]nmantigIu
To Mars the Royal, who pierces names
Se uiron bnanon uanderonado brixton sod-esti
It’s the bewitchment of those women and men under (named)
Cisin…piSSlon atlon atemiston
who completed the unlucky and unjust feat
Etic se-uiron banon canti piSSiantas
and likewise all those that have been accomplices of those women and men
Sollebne(m), Marulliam, Sulpici(i), Claudia(m), Marulliam g., Curiatiu(m), Mat|(e)rno(n), Tiberium, Cantognati, Sulpici(i), (B)regesia, Regina Italica pri(uata) Sulpici(i), Regina Regina, Regina dona Tibe(rius), [..]ix, Ateporigis, Lecti, (Se)gouisu(m)
The repeated title “Regina” might be an invocation of the title of a deity. The others are believed to be Gallic correct names of the individuals focused by the curse.
You may study the RTI picture of the unrolled pill in this on-line viewer and discover a 3D scan of all the grave F2199 under.
