2500 year old curse tablets from Athens

Angela

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If only they worked. :)
https://www.archaeology.org/news/8416-200211-greece-well-curses

With all those bones, it's terrible that no one has tested them.

"Haaretz reports that thirty well-preserved lead curse tablets have been discovered in a 2,500-year-old well in downtown Athens by a team of archaeologists from the German Archaeological Institute, who were investigating the water supply for a nearby bathhouse built in the first century B.C. More than 6,000 ancient graves have also been found in the area, which served as the ancient city's primary burial ground. The researchers explained that Athenians often placed tablets engraved with curses near wells or tombs, in the belief that the souls of the dead would carry the tablets to the gods of the underworld, who would enact the curse. Curses were written anonymously against named personal enemies, adversaries in court battles, athletes wishing bad luck on opponents, and rival merchants."
 
Athenians were mean, I didn't expect that - "to have the souls of the dead carry the tables with curses to the underworld"...
 
Athenians were mean, I didn't expect that - "to have the souls of the dead carry the tables with curses to the underworld"...

I don't know if I would call it "meanness", Dagne. :)

Have you never hated anyone enough to wish them ill? It doesn't even have to be someone you know personally. I'll admit it: I have. I'm not necessarily proud of it, understand; I'm just being honest.

Maybe it's a question of intensity of feeling, for both good and ill, i.e. love and hatred as two sides of a coin.
 
Curse tablets or a witch putting a curse on somebody is a means of externalizing ones strong dislike or hatred. As such it is a beneficial measure because it does not allow those feelings to fester inside oneself.
 

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