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Introduction: Curses, Religion, Aesthetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2024

Laura Salah Nasrallah
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

Someone had it out for a garland weaver named Karpimē Babbia, a low-status woman who lived in Corinth in the late first or early second century CE. Chthonic Hermes, the goddess Anankē or Necessity, and the justice-exacting Fates are called upon to bring monthly destruction to her entire body, head to toe. Someone – a ritual practitioner with a client, most likely – made this curse by inscribing letters onto a thin lead tablet (Figure 0.1). What they wrote included rhythmic Greek, but also bubbled into a continuous stream of letters and sounds, the meaning of which is still unclear, which scholars call voces magicae: magical utterances. The curse-makers then rolled up the lead and pierced it with a nail, depositing it on or near a pedestal at the sanctuary of the goddesses Demeter and Kore, midway up the Acrocorinth, facing the busy city below and the blue of the Gulf of Corinth beyond.

Type
Chapter
Information
Ancient Christians and the Power of Curses
Magic, Aesthetics, and Justice
, pp. 1 - 42
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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