A Roman curse tablet uncovered in the City of David in Jerusalem. Credit: Photo courtesy Robert Walter Daniel via LiveScience.
1,700 years ago, a woman named Kyrilla had vengeance on the mind. A Roman-era curse tablet discovered in a mansion in Jerusalem’s City of David invokes four religious traditions in an attempt to “strike and strike down and nail down the tongue, the eyes, the wrath, the ire, the anger, the procrastination” of the subject of the curse. The intended victim may have been opposed to Kyrilla in a legal dispute, according to a translation of the Roman curse tablet recently published in LiveScience. Made of lead and inscribed with Greek letters, the Roman curse tablet was found in a third-fourth century C.E. mansion that spreads across a half acre of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) excavation beneath the Givati Parking Lot in the City of David. Kyrilla calls upon the Greco-Roman gods Hermes, Persephone, Pluto and Hecate, the Mesopotamian goddess Ereshkigal and Gnostic Abrasax amidst magical words connected with Judaism and the Hebrew language. IAA archaeologists Doron Ben Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets have also uncovered mosaic and fresco remains, carved bone fragments, female figurines and evidence of the presence of the Roman Xth legion near the Roman curse tablet. The archaeologists suggest that the curse tablet was placed in room connected with cult or in close proximity to the subject of the curse.
Read more in LiveScience.
For the rest, see:
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/news/roman-curse-tablet-uncovered-in-jerusalems-city-of-david/
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