Ancient Curses in Bath: Oral Oaths, Lead Etchings, and the Impact on Biblical Interpretation

Abstract

In 1979 the discovery of a cache of curse tablets from the sacred springs of the temple of Sulis Minerva in Bath brought to light some processes by which inscriptions were produced and employed by people outside of the upper class of Greco-Roman society. The tablets reveal that professional scribes were hired by supplicants to assist with the composition of their requests and the inscription onto lead tablets before being cast into the sacred spring. Such attention to the written form of the curses is intriguing in light of the fact that the majority of the supplicants could not read these inscriptions. In addition to the tablets that appear to be etched by professional scribes at Bath, there are also tablets that contain pseudo-inscriptions, mere markings that appear to be an attempt at replicating letters. These pseudo-inscriptions, while they did not contain the official lettering of a spoken curse, conveyed the added import that an etched tablet made to the supplication. The Bath tablets present a new view of the function of writing in a non-literate society, which has implications for the way that Biblical texts were viewed in their ancient contexts, vis-à-vis the oral transmission of the sacred message.