David R. Jordan

CURSE TABLETS FROM MYTILENE

SINCE 1983 the Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens has been investigating, under the direction of Hector and Caroline Williams, the acropolis of the town of Mytilene.1 Among the discoveries was a sanctuary that flourished from the archaic period through the Hellenistic, with terracotta kernoi and hydrophoroi, all typical of a cult of Demeter, some three hundred lamps used only once, and hundreds of bones of piglets.2 At the foot of the altar, among much pottery of the fourth and the third centuries B.C., lay three inscribed lead curse tablets (I and III: Williams and Williams 1990: 185; II: id. 1988: 139, P1. 10), the only examples yet from Lesbos. We publish them here with the encouragement of the Professors Williams, whom we warmly thank for the privilege. Curse tablets (defixiones, KaOCTdSLot) are usually small inscribed sheets of lead meant to bring supernatural forces against unwilling victims.3 They are found chiefly either in graves, where they direct against persons named in their texts the ghosts or the miasma of the dead, or in wells or chthonic sanctuaries, where they enlist underworld forces. Sanctuaries of Demeter at Selinous (Dubois 1989: 33-40, fifth century B.c.; cf. Jameson et al. 1993: 125-131), Rhodes (Zervoudaki 1973: 622, fourth century B.C.?), Knidos (DTAud 1-13, second century B.C.?), Corinth (Bookides and Stroud 1987: 30-31, second century A.D.?), and a sanctuary, probably of Demeter, at Morgantina (SEG XXVI 927-933, second century B.c.) have in all yielded some forty curse tablets. That at Mytilene, with its three, is to be added to this list.4

A Prayer Copied by Dioskoros of Kômê Aphroditês (PGM 13a)

In 1913 J. Maspero published, as P.Cair. Masp. II 67188.1-5, a prayer to the Almighty, one of the many papyrus texts in the hand of the 6th-century poet and scribe Dioskoros of Kome Aphrodites; the sheet on which it was written contains also some attempts at verse and some commercial documents.