Roman Curse Tablets: Inscriptions and Literacy

Over 130 curse tablets have been discovered in the Sacred Roman Spring at Bath and this summer I had the opportunity to work with the museum’s collection team on the Curses Project and handle some of these fascinating objects.

Emily and Kate, placement students, handling the curse tablets.

What are curse tablets?

Curse tablets were a common feature throughout the Greco-Roman world and were an outlet for people to air their anxieties and grievances. They are small sheets of metal, often lead, which contain inscriptions appealing to a deity to cast influence or revenge on another individual. They were usually deposited at religious sites and were often buried or thrown into water so the unique natural hot spring at Bath would have been the ideal location for this ritual. Most of the legible curse tablets at Bath address the goddess Sulis Minerva and relate to the theft of an object.

Curse tablets on display at the Roman Baths museum.

What can they tell us about the Romans?

One aspect of Roman life which they can tell us about is literacy. It is generally believed that literacy levels throughout the Roman world were low and that it was mostly the upper class that were able to read and write. However, only two tablets at Bath were written by the same hand which suggests that there was a significantly higher proportion of the population that could write than what is usually assumed. Many of the curse tablets are thought to have been petitioned by the local native population and this is supported by the lack of Roman name formation within the inscriptions and the mention of low value objects.

 Who or what is Vilbia? 

"May he who carried off Vilbia from me become as liquid as water. May she who obscenely devoured her become dumb, whether Velvinna, Exsupereus, Verianus, Severinus, Augustalis, Comitianus, Catus, Minianus, Germanilla or Jovina."

One of my favourite curse tablets and the first to be discovered at Bath in 1880, is the tablet concerning the theft of Vilbia. The word ‘vilbia’ has proven to be quite problematic.

Some believe that the tablet refers to the theft of a woman, whilst others argue that the word refers to an object as ‘vilbia’ is similar to another British name for a small tool. Such debate which focuses on the language within this inscription shows how hard it is to interpret literary evidence and highlights the dangers in making assumptions about ability. Although it is one of the more legible tablets found at Bath, there are instances where the inscriber has gone over letters to possibly alter mistakes.

Theft of a Hooded Cloak

"To Minerva the goddess Sulis I have given the thief who has stolen my hooded cloak, whether slave or free, whether man or woman. He is not to buy back this gift unless with his own blood."

Another interesting tablet relates to the theft of a hooded cloak. It has been noted that features within the inscription such as spelling and the positioning of the letters is similar to how people with dyslexia write today. This observation has been made regarding other curse tablets and again suggests that the level of education and ability differed amongst those who participated in this particular ritual.

These small tablets offer us insight into an array of topics regarding Romano-British life and I encourage you all to come and see them for yourselves at the Roman Baths.

Kate

Placement student

What do Bath’s curse tablets tell us about the status of the people who wrote them?

The curse tablets are a group of over 130 pieces of lead, many of which are inscribed with prayers to the goddess Sulis Minerva The curse tablets were found during excavations of the Sacred Spring - now known as the King’s Bath - in 1979-80. They are an extremely significant part of The Roman Baths’ collection and were added to the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 2014 due to the unique perspective they give into the lives of ordinary people in Roman Britain.

A view over the Sacred Spring where the tablets were found.

Many of the inscribed tablets are prayers for justice, mentioning the theft of personal belongings and asking the goddess Sulis Minerva to punish the thief. I will be looking at three tablets from the collection to show what the tablets can tell us about the lives of the people who wrote them.

Who wrote the curse tablets?

Britannia was a province rather than a formal part of the Roman Empire; it had been conquered but did not follow all of the same administrative and legal procedures as the rest of the empire. This also meant that the people living there were not considered to be Roman citizens in the eyes of the law. The majority of people in the provinces held the status of  peregrinus, which meant that they were free people (i.e. not enslaved) but did not have the same legal rights as citizens.

Magistrates were busy and would only consider complaints brought by citizens, and would often favour those involving land ownership or business contracts. There was no equivalent of a police force to solve small crimes like theft.

Some peregrini in Britannia may not have been able to write or speak Latin fluently, further excluding them from legal processes as trials, contracts and paperwork were all in Latin. People may have known enough Latin to get by and conduct business, but the majority would not have received a full formal education like a wealthy Roman citizen.

But what are the clues in the tablets that show us that they were written by people of lower social status?

Stolen Possessions

In this tablet, a man called Docilianus says that his cloak has been stolen and asks the goddess to punish the thief with death and insomnia.

The objects reported as stolen to the goddess are of fairly low value. Cloaks, cooking pots, a ring and small amounts of money are some examples of objects mentioned on the tablets. In contrast, the punishments suggested for stealing these objects are very violent or unpleasant. Death, insomnia, blindness, and insanity are just a few examples.

This pattern of low value personal items and harsh punishments speaks to the anger of the people writing the tablets, suggesting that they may not have had the money to easily replace the stolen items.

Language and handwriting

The writing on this tablet uses the Latin alphabet but makes no sense, there are no recognisable Latin words. This has led researchers to believe it may be written in a local British language. 

The inscribed tablets are mostly written in Latin but some of them include unusual spelling or grammar. On many tablets, the writing is uneven, and the letters are not uniform in shape or size. These features indicate that the writers may not have been formally educated in Latin and did not write very often.

Two of the tablets (one is shown above) are thought to have been written in the writer’s native local British language but using the Latin alphabet. They have not been translated as local British languages were not usually written down at this time.

Illiteracy

The many scratches on this tablet may have been made by someone who was illiterate but still wanted to express their anger. The process of making the marks may have been cathartic.

Not all of the tablets are inscribed, some are completely blank while others (like the one above) have only repetitive scratches. These tablets have been interpreted as prayers offered to the goddess by people who were illiterate. They may have spoken their prayer aloud or thought it privately before throwing their tablet in the spring as part of a symbolic ritual. This could suggest that the intention behind depositing the tablet was more important that the actual act of writing the prayer.

Why did people write curse tablets?

As mentioned, the majority of people in Aquae Sulis at the time the tablets were written would have been peregrini, and did not have any way of requesting help from legal powers like magistrates. Instead, they turned to Sulis Minerva as a source of justice.

It is not clear how deeply people believed in the powers of the goddess to return their stolen possessions or punish thieves, but this was one of the only ways they had to seek justice. The presence of so many tablets demonstrate the frustration of lower status people in Roman Aquae Sulis and gives us an idea of how difficult it was to be excluded from the Roman legal system.

Emily

Placement student

British Science Week: A Weighty Subject

To celebrate British Science Week 2019 (8^th – 17^th March) at the Roman Baths, several displays were set up around the museum on the Saturday to showcase some of the scientific aspects of Roman life on this ancient site. I set up a handling table, laid out with a selection of objects not currently on public display, to highlight the various different ways in which the Romans utilised lead.

Lead was used for a whole variety of things in the Roman period, such as slingshot missiles, make-up and anchors. The lead found here at the Roman Baths was mined locally in the Mendip Hills, where there is a large deposit of naturally-occurring ore. This was often combined with tin (from Cornwall) to form an alloy called pewter.

Bowl of a pewter spoon, missing its handle. Discovered in the Temple Precinct.

The majority of the Baths’ 130 curse tablets, all of which were published by R. S. O. Tomlin (Cunliffe 1988), are also composed of this alloy. Curse tablets were a means by which the victim of a crime – usually theft – could vent their anger and express their desire for revenge to be visited on the culprit, by writing a prayer to the goddess Sulis Minerva on the metal and throwing it into the Sacred Spring. 

A curse tablet was made by first melting some lead alloy, then leaving it to set after pouring it out. A thin sheet could then be fashioned out of the cool metal by hammering it, before the message was inscribed on the surface with a stylus.

Curse tablet inscribed with a list of names, originally folded five times.

A few examples were simply left in their original solidified state, resembling a smooth pebble, such as this:

Curse tablet inscribed with a list of names.

Pure lead was used as a sealing agent in more heavy-duty work. The Great Bath is still lined with the original lead sheeting laid down by the Romans to keep it watertight, a fragment of which was removed in the discovery of the Great Bath in 1871.

Lead sheet fragment from the Great Bath - deceptively heavy!

Thanks to its durability, a large quantity of Roman leadwork from the site has survived, allowing us a deeper insight into the Romans’ metallurgical practices.

Jack

Collections Volunteer

Bibliography:

Cunliffe, Barry (editor). The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath. Volume 2. The Finds from the Sacred Spring.  Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1988.

A is for Alphabets

The Sun Lounge has recently become home to some new displays! They are part of a series of changing displays that will explore the weird and wonderful objects in our collection by going through the letters of the alphabet. As the displays move through the various letters of the alphabet, more and more unusual objects will come out of storage and into the cases.

The Alphabets display, currently in the Sun Lounge

The first case, ‘A is for Alphabets’, looks at how different alphabets and writing systems have been used throughout history. Each of the objects shows different writing systems, including Latin, Arabic, Chinese, cuneiform, and hieroglyphs.

Not all of the writing systems displayed here are technically alphabets! Cuneiform, hieroglyphs and Chinese are not ‘true’ alphabets. These were developed earlier and the symbols represent parts of words, or whole words, as opposed to single sounds. Latin and Arabic are the only ‘true’ alphabets displayed as each symbol represents a single sound.

The case shows that writing has been used for similar purposes in different cultures and time periods.  The objects on display include a Roman curse tablet, a number of Chinese coins, a cuneiform tablet and cone, and a bank note. The artefacts broadly fall into 4 categories; trade, religion, organisation, and food and drink. 

Egyptian shabtis

My favourite objects are the two shabtis. These ancient Egyptian figurines represent agricultural workers who would serve the deceased in the afterlife. The hieroglyphs on the front are typically from the Book of the Dead. The Book was made up of spells to help the deceased navigate the underworld.

Alphabets and writing systems give us a fascinating insight into different civilisations throughout time and across the world. I really enjoyed putting together this display. Pop into the Sun Lounge to see this display and keep an eye out for the next installation; the letter B!

Alex

Collections Volunteer

Civilisations: Writing around the World

Writing is a significant part of everyday life. It is a form of communication we often don’t think about. But how important was writing in the past? This is the question I decided to focus on when creating a handling table for the BBC’s Civilisations Festival. 

While selecting various types of writing that we have within the collection, I found that all over the world, different materials have been used as a writing surface. From clay tablets, to wax tablets, to metal, each material is chosen for a different purpose.

Cuneiform is one of the oldest known fully formed written languages, and was used in all Mesopotamian civilisations until its abandonment in favour of the alphabetic system. It was designed by the Sumerians who created the pictorial images to replace the shaped tokens that had been used for accounting. Many of the Cuneiform tablets found are about palace administration, military strategies or, like the tablet within our collection, are an inventory.

The clay tablets were written on using a wedge-shaped stylus, which is where Cuneiform gets its name as it means “wedge-shaped” in Latin. The tablets were reusable as long as they hadn’t been fired which means that all writing can, in theory, be temporary. This suggests the writing was intended to be a temporary and practical record rather than a permanent document of events. In many cases, it is thought that the tablets have been fired accidently, perhaps through an act of warfare where a building has been burnt down and fired the clay tablets inside.

The Cuneiform tablet within our collection dates to c.2027 BC

The Roman Baths collection is the home of 130 curse tablets excavated from the Sacred Spring, each one bearing a message that has been scratched into a sheet of lead or pewter. Many of these are messages to the gods, asking for punishment to fall on the person who betrayed them. Others are just a list of names, are they asking for the gods to curse everyone on the list? Or, are they sending the gods a list of potential perpetrators and asking them to punish the person who did it?

Unlike the Cuneiform tablets, the curses were made to be a permanent and personal record of an event (even if the event was something small like having a glove stolen). These messages are personal and emotive; you can almost feel the anger in each scratch. These curses were deliberately placed in the Spring so that they could be found and read by the gods, and some remain unread even today.

Curse tablet with inscription "May he who has stolen VILBIA from me become as liquid as water..."

It is clear that past civilisations used writing to document the most important things that were going on at the time. For the Sumerians, this began with accounting and evolved into administration, written on a material which allowed you to choose what was kept. The Roman curse tablets are written from a personal and emotional perspective, scratched onto a permanent surface as a physical manifestation of their feelings. 

Whatever the focus of the text, writing is something that separates the human race from the animal kingdom. Many forms of writing have yet to be translated and we can only imagine the stories they tell!

Polly-Mae

Collections Intern

Tuesday Times Tables: Sulis has a Spring in her Step

Having toured the Baths for the first time in a number of years it struck me that although the Baths might have been a place to relax and socialise, religion had an enormous presence in the cultural understanding and use of the site. In order to study and interpret the religious aspects and traditions of the Baths, I sourced some artefacts that had been found in the Sacred Spring, thrown into the waters to win the favour of the residing goddess, Sulis Minerva.

Izzy with her Tuesday Times Table

The complexity of the goddess can be seen in the variety of objects found in the spring:  curse tablets, intended for revenge, a souvenir pan from Hadrian’s Wall, perhaps dedicated as a precious object for the eventuality of good health, and silver feathers from a helmet, for success in a military campaign.

As a mixture of long-term taboos and superstition, religion came to play a huge role in Roman culture with pietas (religious duty) becoming a principle that any Roman would fear to reject in light of the wrath of the gods. Sacrifice, prayer and worship were activities carried out by the devout for personal and collective gain in divine appeasement. Animals would be chosen for their sex, age, fertility and colour (depending on the god/goddess being sacrificed to), slaughtered and its vital organs burnt so that queries might be answered or divine support obtained.

Finds from the Spring. Top: A bronze patera dedicated to Sulis Minerva Bottom: A curse tablet describing the theft of six silver coins

Another prevalent aspect to a religious Roman society was priesthoods. These had a dual purpose to Roman culture both in religion and the state, as did the emperor as head of Rome and its religion (as pontifex maximus). Priestesses were also a vital part of the religious system and contrary to the religious appeal that women should carry out acts of worship in private, the Regina Sacrorum and the Flaminica Dialis had similar privileges to their male counterparts – an interesting attribute to a traditionalist system.

The proximity of the temple complex and tholos to the baths acts as a physical reminder of the purpose of the baths and what these buildings represented to their people. Religion in Bath seemed to play a large part in its society, with the idea of unification through commonality in myth being evident. Through the hybridisation of Sulis and Minerva, a community of Celts and Romans arose and with the further expansion of their empire, the Romans continued to achieve harmony with compromise.

What would you throw into the Spring and dedicate to Sulis Minerva?

Izzy

Volunteer

Tuesday Times Tables: Writing Like A Roman

Just like we do today, the Romans used many different writing materials. Everyday writing was usually done using an iron or lead stylus on a wooden tablet spread with wax, or a thin sheet of wood. More important documents were written with a pen and ink (made of soot and resin) onto wood, papyrus or parchment. At the Roman Baths, we have our famous curses, which were inscribed onto small sheets of lead. Graffiti was painted or scratched onto walls. Gaming counters, made of pottery or bone, were sometimes marked with a stylus or knife on one side to play particular games.

Emily showing visitors how the Romans wrote at her Tuesday Times Table

For my Tuesday Times Table, I chose two of our nicest iron styluses, two bone gaming counters and three of my favourite curse tablets. I also picked seven pieces of inscribed pottery from the depths of our vaults.

The Romans wrote on pottery for lots of different reasons. Sometimes the owner would write their name on a pot to show who it belonged to, like you’d put a name sticker on a lunchbox. Sometimes they would write what was in the pot, like “olive oil” or “fish sauce”. Sometimes they would even use broken bits of pottery like we would use scrap paper, to make a quick note before they threw it away.

Dice cup fragment showing 'X' on base

My favourite piece is a fragment of a small beaker, with an “X” carved into the base. It is possible that this was a dice cup for playing games or gambling. Fortuna was the Roman goddess of luck, and her symbol was the wheel. Scratching an “X” onto the circular base of the dice cup made the shape of a (very vague) wheel, which made the cup lucky!

The most popular thing on my table, however, wasn’t an artefact at all. I used pictures of the letters from one of the curse tablets to create a handwriting or cursive Roman alphabet, which lots of people were very interested to see. It was easier to learn your ABCs in Ancient Rome, because they only had 20 letters. K, Y and Z were added to spell Greek words, but J, U and W weren’t used until much later.

The Roman alphabet

Have a go at writing like a Roman! What would you have written on a curse tablet?

Emily
Collections Volunteer

Tuesday Times Tables: The Curses and the Sacred Spring

One of my favourite jobs during my internship at the The Roman Baths has been working on my Tuesday Times Table. I chose to show to the visitors the curse tablets and the other objects thrown into the Sacred Spring by the Romans. The curses are tablets made of lead and pewter, inscribed by hand and dedicated by people to the goddess Sulis Minerva (as well as Mars and Mercury), asking for revenge and justice for missing objects, probably stolen. Some of them were folded or rolled. Most of the curses are written in colloquial Latin, specifically the Vulgar Latin of the Romano-British population. The tablets contain religious prayers and Roman and Celtic names. Some of them are written in capital letters, others using the old or new Roman cursive and others are illiterate. In the Sacred Spring were found many other objects like coins, jewellery, vessels and wood and stone objects. They were all offerings to the goddess.

During my display by the Great Bath many people seemed to be interested in my project. I had a table on which I could show the objects, in particular the curses with a display board with some further details. People were invited to handle every object (well in their boxes!) and this is the very good thing about the Tuesday Times Tables, because usually people can’t handle objects in museums, but thanks to this project they could personally discover the finds, and they were very surprised by this, and sometimes hesitant!

My handling table by the Great Bath

At my table there was an activity for children too. They could try to write their names using the ancient cursive Roman alphabet. This activity became very popular with adults too, many people tried to write their names or other words with the alphabet and they realised that it is very different from the English alphabet and that there are missing letters!

Stefania Ballocco

Universita’ degli studi di Cagliari (Italy)

Erasmus intern with the Collections team

Le maledizioni e la fonte sacra

Uno degli incarichi svolti durante il mio tirocinio al Roman Bath Museum e’ stato lavorare al Tuesaday Time Table, un progetto che prevede l’esposizione al pubblico di oggetti normalmente non visibili. Ho scelto di mostrare ai visitatori le tavolette delle maledizioni e gli altri oggetti che venivano riposti nella fonte sacra dai Romani.

Le maledizioni sono tavolette di piombo o peltro, incise a mano e dedicate alla dea Sulis Minerva. I dedicatari chidevano giustizia e vendetta per oggetti persi, probabilmente rubati. Alcune di queste sono state ritrovate nella fonte piegate o arrotolate. La maggior parte sono scritte in latino colloquilale, in particolare e’ stato usato il latino volgare della popolazioni Romano –britanniche. Le tavolette contengono preghiere alla dea e sono una fonte per lo studio e la conoscenza dell’onomastica romana e celtica. Alcune sono state scritte in stampatello, altre utilizzando il corsivo, altre ancora sono incomprensibili o illegibili. Nella fonte sacra sono stati ritrovati molti altri oggetti, quali monete, vasi, gioielli,  e oggetti in osso e in pietra. Erano tutte offerte per la dea.

Durante l’esposizione nel Great Bath i visitatori del museo si sono mostrati interessati al mio progetto.  Ho esposto le maledizioni e gli altri oggetti in un tavolo, nel quale si trovava anche un pannello con informazioni aggiuntive. Le persone erano invitate a toccare con mano ogni oggetto (posto ovviamente all’interno della sua scatola!), e questa e’ la vera cosa interessante del Tuesday Time Table, in quanto di solito i visitatori nei musei non possono toccare gli oggetti, ma grazie a questo progetto possono scoprirli personalmente, e molti di loro sono sorpresi da questo, alcuni addirittura esitanti.

La mia esposizione nel Great Bath

Nel mio tavolo c’era anche un attivita’ dedicata ai bambini, i quali potevano provare a scrivere il loro nome usando l’antico alfabeto latino corsivo. Questa attivita’ e’ diventata molto popolare anche tra gli adulti, che si sono cimentati nel provare a scrivere i loro nomi e altre parole, scoprendo che l’antico alfabeto latino e’ completamente diverso da quello inglese e che molte lettere sono assenti!

Stefania Ballocco

Universita’ degli studi di Cagliari 

Write Like a Roman!

 On July 31^st, as part of the ‘Wednesday Wonders’ event, which aims to showcase different aspects of the Roman Baths and its archaeological collection to visitors, I chose to show artifacts and replica items from the collection that illustrate literacy in Roman Bath and the importance of writing to the inhabitants of Aquae Sulis.

For Romans being literate was an essential part of the Roman education. A basic grasp of literacy was essential for any Roman citizen to participate in business and citizen life. We have many items from the collection at the Baths that highlight this:

·         Imitation Samian ware which shows a literate potter’s stamp – this shows that some of the craftsmen were literate and they used literacy as a means of identification on their products.

·         A fragment of an iron stylus, which was discovered at Lansdown. This highlights to us that in the areas surrounding Bath there was a high level of literacy.

·         Fragments from a Samian jar/ink pot. This would have been used when writing on wooden tablets or papyrus.

·         A fragment of a public inscription that was cut into white marble found in the Temple precinct.

  

   C

] IB CL T[

This might be translated as:

TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS [SON OF] TIBERIUS

Finally and some might say most importantly, the curse tablets embody through literacy the essential humanity of the inhabitants of Aquae Sulis and suggest to us that literacy may be more wide spread than we had initially assumed. We can see from the tablets that the inhabitants of Aquae Sulis used their literacy as a means of communicating with the Goddess Sulis Minerva. One of the Curse tablets, that I had on display from the collection, had inscribed upon it a list of names of the suspected thieves.

 

 

As part of the activity both adults and children alike were able to have a go at writing their own name in Latin, both on a replica wooden writing tablet and also on a piece of paper which they could take home!

 

 

    

 Alice Marsh, Student Placement

What can we Learn from the Curses?

The Romans were highly religious and truly believed in omnipotent Gods who had the power to influence everything in both the natural and human world.
The lack of popular welfare and the high levels of warfare in the Roman Empire made prayer and religion an everyday element of Roman life.

Although the Romans had designated guardian deities for most walks of life. It is notable that Gods were not restricted to acting as merciful guardians. The many curse tablets found here at the Roman Baths show that the Gods were also to be feared as vengeful bringers of justice and as omnipotent and often violent powers.

Curse tablets are interesting artefacts which can tell us a lot about religion and literacy in the Roman world. They were usually pieces of sheet lead which were inscribed with ‘curses’ in which the writer (often through a scribe) would appeal to a deity, in this case Sulis Minerva, to exact revenge on a person who had acted against them. They were then folded up and thrown into the spring for Sulis Minerva to read and act upon.

One of the unfolded curses

That curse tablets are found in both rural and urban areas shows that they were not exclusive to the military or elites. Although some people would have used scribes, the tablets also show that literacy was pervasive in Britain and that it was not only the elites who could read and write.
The language of the tablets firstly shows that a British dialect of Latin had emerged, and secondly, the presence of Celtic loanwords on the tablets shows that it was not only the Roman immigrants writing the tablets. This shows that native Britons were beginning to adopt Roman cultural practices and that cultural assimilation was taking place.





The Vilbia Curse





The tablets also reveal much about peoples’ relationships with the gods.
The tablets were written by victims of crime and were essentially appeals for justice. Most give detail about what happened but others just name lists of suspects and must have been accompanied by oral dedications.
In theory Roman or local law ought to have dealt with these complaints depending on status, but in an under policed society deities may have been most people’s only hope. That the tablets go so far as to suggest suspects and penalties suggest that deities were revered as a parallel to the judicial or legal system which could be appealed to directly by Roman citizens. It also suggests that gods were perceived to be just, and also protective of their worshippers.

Bethan,  Cardiff University

Why you shouldn’t lie!

For me, one of the most interesting groups of finds from the sacred spring has to be the curse tablets. Unlike many texts remaining from the Roman period, these hold the words of ordinary citizens, and are a fascinating insight into the beliefs and superstitions of the local people.

Currently on display in the new cases in the King’s Bath corridor are several of these tablets, included one named ‘Sanction against perjury”. This is an almost-whole example, no more than 7.5cm by 5.5cm, inscribed with a text from a practiced hand.....

Sanction against perjury - BATRM1983.13.b.12

'Uricalus, Docilosa his wife, Docilis his son ans Docilina, Decentius his brother, Alogiosa: the names of those who have sworn at the spring of the goddess Sulis on the 12th April. Whosoever has perjured himself there you are to make him pay for it to the goddess Sulis in his own blood.'

The majority of curses found in the spring concern theft, or similar loss. They range from a list of possible suspects with a call on the goddess to reveal the culprit, to bitter accusations against one person, and a desire for bloodthirsty punishment.

However, as the title suggests, this is a text of a different nature. Instead of detailing a past crime, it is a record of an oath sworn to prevent a future one. Witnessed by “Uricalus, Docilosa his wife, Docilis his son and Docilina, Decentinus his brother, Algiosa”, it states, “Whosoever has perjured himself there you are to make him pay for it to the goddess Sulis in his own blood.”

Perjury is the crime of lying under oath; this and the fact that it is close relations who are listed means that the tablet probably concerned a family matter, most likely the division of inherited property. The language used is fairly formal, hinting at a legal-document style. These people believed in the goddess so much that they were willing to put legal matters at her feet, and their faith meant that they wouldn’t go against their word, for the imagined punishment would be severe. After all, who wants to “pay for it…in his own blood”?


Livi Dunlop - work experience placement in the Collections Department.

Six of the Best

Following on from ‘The Curses Condensed’, here is an up-close and personal look at six of the curses from the collection. The main text source and all of the transcriptions and line drawings have come from Roger Tomlin’s work on the curses in Cunliffe, B. (ed.), 1988, The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath Volume II : The Finds from the Sacred Spring, Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph No 16

1. Celtic curse - BATRM1983.13.b.118

List of names

Celtic text written down in Latin letters

It is likely that British was only a spoken language and therefore in writing, people would have used Latin letters, i.e. an attempt to write British sounds in Latin letters.



2. Theft of a woman’s cape – BATRM1983.13.b.27

‘Lovernisca [gives] him who, whether [man] or woman, whether boy or girl, has stolen (her) cape.’

Written from right to left in mirror-image cursive, the letters are unevenly spaced and sometimes distorted.

Did you know ?

Lovernisca is a female ‘Celtic’ name that means vixen.



3. Theft of a bathing tunic – BATRM1983.13.b.157

‘To the goddess Sulis. If anyone has stolen the bathing tunic of Cantissena, whether slave or free,…’

This curse relates to the theft of a bathing tunic, sneaky thieves or did someone just forget to pack their swimming costume?


4. ABC…… - BATRM1983.13.b.110

‘A B C D E F X’

Part of the alphabet, A-F. Was the X added at the end for magical significance?

Did you know ?

Alphabets and part-alphabets were commonly found as graffiti?



5. Theft of VILBIA – BATRM1983.14.b.1

‘May he who has stolen VILBIA from me become as liquid as water. who has stolen it [or her]. Velvinna, Exsupereus, Verianus, Severinus, A(u)gustalis, Comitianus, Minianus, Catus, Germanilla, Jovina.’

This tablet is also known as the ‘Bath Curse’. It was found on site in 1880, during Major Davis’s excavations of the Sacred Spring. Although written conventionally (left to right), several of the letters within this piece of text have been reversed.
This curse tablet alludes to a more serious theft - the theft of a woman (perhaps a slave) named Vilbia.



6.Theft of a rug – BATRM1983.13.b.113

‘…the rug which I have lost,…(his) life…has stolen…unless with his own blood.’

The text on this tablet is mixed and needs to be treated as a series of anagrams to be deciphered. Rather than being a secret cryptic text, it would seem that the writer suffered from dyslexia and got his letters muddled up.



For the full inside story on the featured curses and more read:

Tomlin, R.S.O., 1988 ‘The curse tablets’ in Cunliffe (ed.) 1988.

Tomlin, R.S.O., 1992 ‘Voices from the Sacred Spring’ in Bath History Volume IV, Millstream Books

The ‘Celtic Curse’ features as one of Bath in 100 Objects more information can be found at http://visitbath.co.uk/site/100-objects

The Curses Condensed

Curse Tablets

‘Curse tablets’ are inscribed pieces of lead, usually in the form of small, thin sheets, intended to influence by supernatural means, the actions or welfare of persons or animals against their will. At Bath they mostly appeal to the goddess Minerva, although we do have one petition to Mars and another to Mercury.

In nearly all cases, both here and elsewhere, they appear to have been written in response to theft – here, most likely from the adjoining bath-house.

The Roman Baths has 137 curse tablets within the collection. They are described as being lead, but in most cases they have been made of lead alloy and are better described as pewter………

Of those 137…..

29 are written in capitals

80 are written in ‘cursive’, a script used for everyday documents and letters. Of these, 63 are written in Old Roman Cursive ORC and 17 are written in New Roman Cursive NRC (Indirectly NRC is the ancestor of the scripts used for present day handwriting in Europe.)

4 are written in illiterate texts - scratches made to imitate writing, or sometimes with no trace of writing at all.

5 tablets are un-inscribed.

7 tablets are still folded or otherwise illegible.

Between them all there are over 150 names mentioned.

2 are believed to have come from the same sheet of metal.

1 shows evidence of being copied.

1 could possibly have been written by someone with dyslexia.

Some are double sided, some have nail holes, some have been folded and some have not…….

The very writing of curses was manipulated for magical effect. Letters could be written in mirror-image form or the order of letters in a word, the words in a line, or lines in a text might be reversed. They are mostly written as one long continuous text without abbreviations. The writer might also change the direction in which words or letters were written in alternating lines.

Important comparative sites

Caerleon
Uley
Lydney
Brean Down

For a nice compact website on curses in general please follow this link http://curses.csad.ox.ac.uk/beginners/

Helen Harman - Collections Assistant