Week 3 - Eidinow "Binding Spells on Tablets and Papyri"

Week 3 - Eidinow "Binding Spells on Tablets and Papyri"

by Audrey Kinney -

  • What makes a curse? (p. 351)

    • “binding spells” are not the only thing found on curse tablets

    • There are also “petitions for justice”

  • What is the relationship between binding and prayer for justice? (p. 352)

    • Are justice prayers “personal expressions in the context of temple-religion”? Does this make them normative?

    • Could retribution be related to binding? Could binding be related to justice?

    • Binding spells were typically buried, while prayers seem to have been displayed in sanctuaries (p. 367)

  • Who is writing curse tablets? (p. 357-9)

    • Who are the victims?

    • What is the through line of these examples? Can we use them to define a “curse?”

    • Expert spellcasters and workshops? What are the implications of this? (p. 378-81)

    • Ordinary people too: Might this be a democratization of religion? How common was literacy? Do the curse tablets that are a list of names show the accessibility of the medium to those with low literacy levels?

  • On the origin of the curse tablet

    • The oldest curse tablets date to the end of the 6th or beginning of the 5th century BCE (p. 357) and are from Sicily, Olbia, and Attica (Faraone, p. 3)

    • Papyrus is ephemeral, but lead is a lasting metal. Why have we not found lead curse tablets from before the 5th century?

    • Did cursing start in 500? What led to the birth of this practice? This seems unbelievable to me.

    • Did curse tablets exist before this, but we just have not found them?

    • Did the practice of cursing by writing on lead tablets begin in 500, but as an evolution of an earlier practice? What practice could that be? Curse dolls?

    • Consider writing and literacy. The Greek alphabet was developed ~800. Literacy may not have been common enough for the practice of curse tablets to take root until 500. But why have we not found even one or two before this? Did they not exist? Or were they so few that we have not found them?

  • What steps did one take in creating a curse?

  • Material components:

    • Can binding spells written on paper be tied to the binding effigies that have been found? (p. 363)

    • There may have been a written component and a material component.

    • Lead is cold and heavy, but also cheap and used for more than just curse tablets. (p. 364)

    • Lead was sometimes shaped into body parts as part of the spell (p. 364-5).

    • PGM V. 304-369 from the Greek readings describes specific actions one must take with the involved objects.

    • What do the folding, nailing, and burying have to do with the contents of the curse? (p. 365). Does this have to do with the aggressive nature of curses? Does this have to do with secrecy?

  • Consider the Louvre doll and examples 3-4 (p. 357-9). Is a love spell a binding spell or curse?

  • On the normativity of curse tablets

    • Some have argued that it was illegal. (p. 366-7)

    • Though this does not seem to be a case, it may have been a “secret” practice.

    • Why were they secret? What does this say about social views of them?

  • Formulas

    • A verb (binding, burying, submerging, destroying) + the target + aspects (body parts, workshops, tools, words, deeds) of the target + supernatural invocation (p. 369-70. 372)

    • I place/give/dedicate + items belonging to the victim (such as strands of hair) + supernatural invocation (p. 371-2)

    • Use of legal terminology

    • supernatural invocation + imperative verbs/persuasive analogies (376-)

    • Do these formulas vary greatly in intention?

  • Supernatural invocations (372-6)

    • Gods

    • Daimons

    • Dead as witnesses

    • Dead (nekudaimon) as actors

    • Why the increasing reliance on the dead?