Curse Tablets Discovered in 2,400-Year-Old Grave

Five lead tablets that cursed tavern keepers some 2,400 years ago have been discovered in a young woman's grave in Athens, Greece.

Four of the tablets were engraved with curses that invoked the names of "chthonic" (underworld) gods, asking them to target four different husband-and-wife tavern keepers in Athens. The fifth tablet was blank and likely had a spell or incantation recited orally, the words spoken over it.

All five tablets were pierced with an iron nail, folded and deposited in the grave. The grave would have provided the tablets a path to such gods, who would then do the curses' biddings, according to ancient beliefs.

Dog's ear curse

One of the curses targeted husband-and-wife tavern keepers named Demetrios and Phanagora. The curse targeting them reads in part (translated from Greek):

"Cast your hate upon Phanagora and Demetrios and their tavern and their property and their possessions. I will bind my enemy Demetrios, and Phanagora, in blood and in ashes, with all the dead…"

"I will bind you in such a bind, Demetrios, as strong as is possible, and I will smite down a kynotos on [your] tongue."

The word kynotos literally means "dog's ear," an ancient gambling term that "was the name for the lowest possible throw of dice," Jessica Lamont, an instructor at John Hopkins University in Baltimore who recently completed a doctorate in classics, wrote in an article published recently in the journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. The "physical act of hammering a nail into the lead tablet would have ritually echoed this wished-for sentiment," Lamont wrote.

"By striking Demetrios' tongue with this condemningly unlucky roll, the curse reveals that local taverns were not just sociable watering holes, but venues ripe for gambling and other unsavory activities in Classical Athens," Lamont wrote. 

A woman's grave

The grave where the five curse tablets were found was excavated in 2003 by archaeologists with Greece's Ephorate for Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities. The grave was located northeast of the Piraeus, the port of Athens. Details of the burial have not yet been published, but Lamont said that excavation reports indicate that it contained the cremated remains of a young woman. Lamont has been studying the curse tablets at the Piraeus Museum, where they are now kept.  

"The way that curse tablets work is that they're meant to be deposited in an underground location," such as a grave or well, Lamont told Live Science. "It's thought that these subterranean places provided a conduit through which the curses could have reached the underworld," and its chthonic gods would then do the curse's biddings, Lamont said. 

The woman buried in the grave might have had nothing to do with the curses or tavern keeping, Lamont said. Perhaps she died at the time when someone wanted to cast these curses on others in the same community, Lamont said.

During the ceremonies surrounding the woman's death, the grave "would have been accessible, a good access point for someone to deposit these tablets underground and bury them," Lamont said.

Who cast the curses?

The writing on the curse tablets is neat and its prose eloquent, suggesting that a professional curse writer created the tablets. "It's very rare that you get something so explicit and lengthy and beautifully written, of course in a very terrible way," Lamont said.

This curse writer, who probably provided other forms of supernatural services — including charms, spells and incantations — was likely hired by someone who worked in Athens' tavern-keeping industry, according to Lamont. "I think it's likely that the person who commissioned them was probably in the world of the tavern himself or herself," possibly a business rival of the four husband-and-wife tavern keepers, Lamont said.
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2016. “Curse Tablets Discovered in 2,400-Year-Old Grave”. Live Science. Posted: April 4, 2016. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/54285-curse-tablets-uncovered-in-greece.html

Gruesome Find: 100 Bodies Stuffed into Ancient House

The remains of 97 human bodies have been found stuffed into a small 5,000-year-old house in a prehistoric village in northeast China, researchers report in two separate studies.

The bodies of juveniles, young adults and middle-age adults were packed together in the house — smaller than a modern-day squash court — before it burnt down. Anthropologists who studied the remains say a "prehistoric disaster," possibly an epidemic of some sort, killed these people.

The site, whose modern-day name is "Hamin Mangha," dates back to a time before writing was used in the area, when people lived in relatively small settlements, growing crops and hunting for food. The village contains the remains of pottery, grinding instruments, arrows and spearheads, providing information on their way of life.

"Hamin Mangha site is the largest and best-preserved prehistoric settlement site found to date in northeast China," a team of archaeologists wrote in a translated report published in the most recent edition of the journal Chinese Archaeology (the original report appeared in Chinese in the journal Kaogu). In one field season, between April and November 2011, the researchers found the foundations of 29 houses, most of which are simple one-room structures containing a hearth and doorway. The house with the bodies, dubbed "F40," was just 210 square feet (about 20 square meters). "On the floor, numerous human skeletons are disorderly scattered," the archaeologists wrote.

Photos taken by the archaeologists convey the prehistoric scene better than words do. "The skeletons in the northwest are relatively complete, while those in the east often [have] only skulls, with limb bones scarcely remaining," the archaeologists wrote. "But in the south, limb bones were discovered in a mess, forming two or three layers."

At some point the structure burnt down. The fire likely caused wooden beams of the roof to collapse, leaving parts of skulls and limb bones not only charred but also deformed in some way, the archaeologists wrote.  

The remains were never buried and were left behind for archaeologists to discover 5,000 years later.

What happened?

An anthropological team at Jilin University in China is studying the prehistoric remains, trying to determine what happened to these people. The team has published a second study, in Chinese, in the Jilin University Journal – Social Sciences edition, on their finds. (A brief English-language summary of their results is available on the American Association of Physical Anthropologists website.)

The Jilin team found that the people in that house died as the result of a "prehistoric disaster" that resulted in dead bodies being stuffed into the house.  

The dead came in faster than they could be buried. "The human bone accumulation in F40 was formed because ancient humans put remains into the house successively and stacked centrally," wrote team leaders Ya Wei Zhou and Hong Zhu in the study.

The team found that about half of the individuals were between 19 and 35 years of age. No remains of older adults were found.

The ages of the victims at Hamin Mangha are similar to those found in another prehistoric mass burial, which was previously unearthed in modern-day Miaozigou in northeast China, the researchers noted.

"This similarity may indicate that the cause of the Hamin Mangha site was similar to that of the Miaozigou sites. That is, they both possibly relate to an outbreak of an acute infectious disease," wrote Zhou and Zhu.

If it was a disease, it killed off people from all age groups quickly, leaving no time for survivors to properly bury the deceased. The scientists did not speculate as to what disease it may have been.

The excavation was carried out by researchers from the Inner Mongolian Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology of Jilin University.
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2015. “Gruesome Find: 100 Bodies Stuffed into Ancient House”. Live Science. Posted: July 27, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/51662-100-bodies-found-prehistoric-house.html

The Teotihuacans exhumed their dead and dignified them with make-up

In collaboration with the National University of Mexico, a team of Spanish researchers has analysed for the first time remains of cosmetics in the graves of prehispanic civilisations on the American continent. In the case of the Teotihuacans, these cosmetics were used as part of the after-death ritual to honour their city's most important people.

A research team from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the University of Valencia has studied various funerary samples found in urns in the Teotihuacan archaeological site (Mexico) that date from between 200 and 500 AD.

The scientists have been researching Mayan wall paintings in Mexico and Guatemala since 2006. Published in the 'Journal of Archaeological Science', this project came about after contact on various occasions with other researchers in the area, namely the National University of Mexico, who wanted to know the composition and function of the cosmetics found in pots.

"The conclusion that we have reached, given the structure of the pigments found, is that they are remains of cosmetics that were used in rituals following burial. At that time it was common to periodically practice a kind of remembrance worship of the deceased high nobility," as explained to SINC by María Teresa Domenech Carbo, director of the University Institute of Heritage Restoration of the Polytechnic University of Valencia and lead author of the study.

In these rituals the high priest of the city would conduct a ceremony in the dwelling of the most noble of citizens (nobility, princes and kings). The reason for this is that unlike today where graves are located in special places, in those days the deceased were buried underneath the floor of their homes.

"The priest would go to the home and would pay homage to the deceased with the family present. Cosmetics were used by the priest carrying out the ceremony and formed a part of the ritual. The remains of carbonaceous particles found lead to the belief that aromatic material were burnt, with the priest painting parts of the body with those pigments. In addition, it is probable that the body was removed and 'redecorated' too," explains Domenech.

Furthermore, the researchers outline that although we could think that these materials in the urns belonged to the deceased in life and were put in the grave to accompany their owner into the 'new life', as in the case of the Egyptians, the fact that the make-up did not contain any agglutinative substance (an organic vehicle that allows make-up to stick to the face or body) leads us to believe that they had more of a symbolic nature.

"It is not very frequent to find cosmetic products in archaeological excavations in America. These are the first on this continent to be analysed in a serious and systematic way," ensures the researcher. In Europe and Africa, mainly in countries such as Italy and Egypt, the analysis of cosmetic products is more common. Teotihuacan is one of the most important and most visited archaeological sites in Mexico thanks to its close location to Mexico City and its spectacular great Mayan pyramid.

Flowing trade in Prehispanic Mexico

As well as providing more knowledge on the funerary rituals of this millennium-old culture, the cosmetic remains found help us to identify the social relevance of the buried individuals and they prove the existence of fluid commerce between the different areas of Mexico. The scientists found material coming from the surroundings of Teotihuacan, such as pulverised volcanic rock pigments and other clay-like types typical of the area's geology.

Nonetheless, some remains, such as those mica and jarosite particles found, are not native to the surroundings and were probably imported from different parts of Mexico. This, in turn, confirms the existence of trade. "No surprise since this city dominated the entire Mesoamerican region and it has been shown that fluid trade existed in certain southern areas," points out the researcher.

In addition, the appearance of these remains with the body of the deceased indicates their social status. "Unless the person was very important to this civilisation they were not buried with cosmetic products. The deceased would have had to hold an important position in society, such as that of a king, a prince or a high noble," ensures the expert.

Following this study, the research team analysed another collection of cosmetic material in the region of Guatemala. The results are currently awaiting publication.
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References:

EurekAlert. 2013. “The Teotihuacans exhumed their dead and dignified them with make-up”. EurekAlert. Posted: January 9, 2013. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/f-sf-tte010913.php