amuletsCurse tabletκατάδεσμος

said ka-TA-des-mos; Latin tabella defixionis, defixio

also: defixio · katadesmos · binding tablet · judicial prayer

amuletGreece and the AegeanRome and ItalyBritain and IrelandWestern EuropeGreece Italy United Kingdom

A very thin sheet of lead with tiny letters scratched into it, then rolled, folded, or pierced through with a nail. It goes into the ground: buried in a grave or tomb, thrown down a well or a pool, shut in an underground sanctuary, nailed to a temple wall. Some are found with small bound figurines, hands and feet tied, sometimes pierced too. Some have hair or a scrap of clothing folded into them.

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from the Greek and Latin words for 'pierce' and 'bind' — katadesmos from katadeō, to bind down; defixio from defigere, to fix or nail down cited

When

early 5th century BCE to late Roman antiquity cited

Period	Classical Greek to Roman Britain
How the date is known	excavated — dug up in a dated context
Note	The floor is the Selinus group, mostly early 5th century BCE, named in the cited article as the first set discovered. The upper end is the Romano-British material from Bath and Uley; the article gives no last attestation, so 399 is a hedge.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Plaque or tablet
Made of	Lead · Iron
Goes	In the grave · On a wall · In the foundations
Made by	written by the aggrieved and by professionals; tablets prepared in advance with the target's name left blank show a trade
It says	the target's name, the crime or the condition, the harm asked for, and often voces mysticae — words such as Bazagra, Bescu or Berebescu, belonging to no known language (Greek and Latin)
Retired	yes — it is replaced rather than kept
Note	Iron is here for the nails driven through the rolled sheet. No published measurement was read.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

A court case or an official citedsaid by the writers of the Athenian tablets, who ask that an opposing litigant botch his performance in court, forget his words and become dizzythe tablet is aimed at a person, not at a harm; it is filed under the harm the writer was facing
Theft citedsaid by the 130 tablets from the sacred spring at Bath, all but one of which concern the restitution of stolen goods
Going unloved citedsaid by the writers of erotic binding spells — the agogai that bind a target to oneself and the diakopai that drive a rival away by making them repulsive
Danger to the dead — charms put in a grave for the person in it citedsaid by the writers of the tablets that are not curses at all: some were laid at the graves of people who died young or violently, to help lay their souls to rest

The story

This is the amulet turned around, and the atlas keeps it here on purpose. Everything else in this batch is written to keep a harm off a person. A defixio is written to put one on. Same lead, same scratched letters, same divine names, same burial in a grave — and the target is a named human being.

About 1,600 of them have been found, most in Greek, 220 from Attica alone. The first set came from Selinus in Sicily: twenty-two tablets, mostly early fifth century BCE, aimed at somebody the writer was suing. The Athenian tablets are full of lawsuits — may he botch his performance in court, forget his words, become dizzy. Others are erotic binding spells, or aimed at thieves, business rivals and sporting rivals.

In 1979 and 1980, 130 tablets came out of the sacred spring at Aquae Sulis, now Bath. All but one concern the restitution of stolen goods. More than eighty similar tablets were found at a temple of Mercury at West Hill, Uley, which makes south-western Britain one of the great centres of Latin defixiones. Some scholars refuse to call these curses at all and prefer 'judicial prayers', because what they mostly do is list a crime in detail and hand the punishment to a god.

The writing is doing work beyond its sense. Voces mysticae — words in no known language — recur; Stanley J. Tambiah proposed in 1968 that they represent "the language that demons can understand". Clement of Alexandria, around 200 CE, held that human language was not fit for addressing gods at all. Tablets survive with blank spaces where a name should go, prepared in advance and finished when a customer paid.

Inference — the blank space is the tell. An object sold ready-made with a gap for the buyer's enemy is a product, and the professional who wrote it had the same relationship to his customers as the man selling gems with Abrasax on them two streets away.

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