Someone buried a curse 1,800 years ago to destroy an enemy using Egyptian magic; archaeologists have just found it

A tiny lead tablet dug up in the Netherlands is rewriting how far ancient Egyptian magic spread across the Roman world. According to a statement from Heidelberg University, researchers at its Institute for Papyrology have deciphered an ancient curse tablet discovered in the Dutch city of Heerlen, and the find is unlike anything previously seen in that part of Europe.

A small object with a big story
The tablet is slightly larger than a credit card, at 9.3 by 4.8 centimeters or about 3.7 by 1.9 inches. It was found by a team of Dutch archaeologists in a pit underneath the town hall square in Heerlen, according to Heidelberg University. The square is built on the site of Coriovallum, a Roman military settlement that guarded the northern frontier of the empire in the province of Lower Germania, now split between parts of the southeastern Netherlands and western Germany.

The tablet is dated to the 2nd century A.D., which makes it about 1,800 to 1,900 years old, says HeritageDaily. What is so surprising is not just its age. The tablet is written in ancient Greek, not Latin, as would normally be expected on curse tablets from this part of the Roman Empire, Dr. Rodney Ast, academic director at the Institute for Papyrology. Also, the Greek text appears to reference Egypt.


How scientists read a curse buried for centuries
You can't just hold up a corroded lead tablet to the light and read it. Researchers used a technique called reflectance transformation imaging to combine photos taken with different lights to reveal faint surface details that are otherwise not visible.

That process revealed three different sets of markings on the tablet. The analysis showed Egyptian-style invocations of deities and demons written in Greek, along with three symbols, known as “characteres,” which were magical signs believed to help a message reach supernatural powers, and two male and two female names. According to Smithsonian Magazine, those four people named on the tablet are described as enslaved people.

Why a curse tablet, anyway?
Cursing your enemies with buried lead was not a fringe practice in the Roman world; it was a known practice of settling a grudge. Ancient Origins reports that curse tablets, called defixiones in Latin and katadesmoi in Greek, were small sheets of lead with spells to harm or restrain a rival, and lead was used because its heavy, cold properties were thought to increase the binding power of the curse. Such tablets were often buried to try to influence legal disputes, athletic contests, business rivalries, or romantic relationships, the same report notes.

It’s not perfectly clear who this specific curse was aimed at. It’s possible that an enslaved person wrote the curse, or that the four named people jointly invoked it against an unnamed person.

A mash-up of cultures on the empire's edge
One detail that strikes the eye of historians is the mixture of names on the tablet. The two male names are Latin; the two female names are Greek. Heidelberg University describes this combination as unusual. Researchers believe that one of the women may have brought this style of Egyptian magic to the region herself.

Such cultural mixing became more visible as the Roman Empire grew. Traditions from the Near East, Egypt, Judaism, and even sometimes Christianity increasingly merged and spread across the Roman Empire in the early centuries A.D., explains Heidelberg University’s Professor Joachim Quack, director of the university’s Institute for Egyptology. He describes the Heerlen discovery as a vivid example of that mixing. The same statement says that magic was important in Egyptian society. Protective and healing spells were often accepted publicly, but spells designed to harm others were usually performed in secret.

It’s a reminder that the Roman frontier was not some remote outpost cut off from the rest of the empire. People, beliefs, and even spells moved hundreds of miles, carried by soldiers, traders, and, in this case, perhaps by enslaved people who brought their own spiritual traditions with them.

What's next for the tablet
All the secrets of the tablet are not yet revealed. HeritageDaily reports that a full scholarly publication of the inscription and its interpretation is anticipated, enabling researchers worldwide to study this rare artefact further. The museum in Heerlen is to put the curse tablet on public display in the meantime, Heidelberg University says.

For now, this tiny bit of lead offers us a rare, human glimpse of Roman frontier life nearly two thousand years ago: people who were angry, scared, or desperate enough to reach for whatever magic they knew, even magic that had traveled with them all the way from the Nile.