Short Stuff: Curse Tablets

Curse tablets are exactly what you think - tablets with curses inscribed on them. But what were they used for, and when did people do this? Hit play and those answers shall be revealed!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Jerry's here sitting in for Dave and this short stuff.
Getty up, tally ho, let's go. Let's make sure this
one doesn't blow. Oh, say thank you, A curse, a
curse upon your house, a pox upon you, then jerk.

(00:24):
I would never write a curse tablet for you, my friend. No,
nor would I. I mean, like I I would even
think that would go without saying, because it's just such
a jerk move to write a cursed habilely against somebody,
if you think about it. Yeah, I never had heard
of these before. Uh. These are what kind of what
it sounds like. It's a tablet? Uh. This is generally

(00:48):
ancient rome or grease with a curse inscribed upon it. Uh.
And you would generally inscribe this curse um after somebody's death, right,
not neces necessarily, not necessarily though there's one, a famous
one in POMPEII that somebody affixed to a tomb so
you could do it after death. And what you were

(01:09):
essentially saying, do you want to read that one? Sure
you ready? I'm ready? And this comes to our friends
from house stuffworks Dot com in Ancient Roman, ancient Greece. Stranger,
stay a short while if it is not too troublesome,
and learn what to avoid. This man, who I hoped
was a friend of mine, brought prosecutors to me, a

(01:32):
k A. Persecutors sort of, I think the literal pink
you suit him? Okay, prosecutors to me, and oh yeah sure,
and instigated proceedings. I am grateful to the gods and
my innocence, colon. I am free from all trouble. He
who deceived us, may he not receive the pennates, which

(01:53):
are the household gods, nor the underworld. So what this
guy who cursed this this other person's tomb was saying,
is this guy's a jerk. I hope that his his
soul basically doesn't even make it to the afterlife. That
essentially he's just doomed to wander aimlessly for eternity because

(02:13):
he sued me once. That's right. And this is a
great example of a sort of a standard issue cursed tablet,
also known at times as a uh here we go
the fixione. Wow nice, I was gonna say the E
on the end and pinch my four finger and thumb together.
The fixion. Yeah, I think that's that's it. You might

(02:36):
be right, but this was a common practice at various
times through the ancient times. And uh, they were not
necessarily always written on the same thing. Sometimes it was papyrus.
Sometimes I believe they found lamps and pieces of clay
and things like that. It kind of depends on how
much money you had. Um, but there was a lot

(02:56):
of lead because of the silver mining operations, especially near Athens,
and so lead turned out to be a really great
sort of permanent thing that you could carve something on
and apparently looks really cool when carved upon. Yeah, there's
somebody interviewed in the House Stuff Works article that said,
you know when you when you write on it, when

(03:17):
you carve it, it has like this kind of like
a silvery line that really kind of pops I guess
against like the dull the dullness of the oxidized lead.
And then also it's just easy to write and let
you can carve in it pretty easily. You don't have
to be like a silver smith of any sort to
do that. You can just be an average smoke with

(03:38):
something sharp. That's right. Uh, there was a historian too.
They talked to that said that it kind of came
and went throughout history. But it, interestingly, it was like
a real fad and then went a way really quickly.
Each time that happened. It wasn't like a gradual rise
and fall. They described it as sharp spikes and popularity. Yeah,

(03:59):
and I saw that it was. Um, it was a
The time that it popped up was somewhere around like
five hundred BC too, maybe three fifty BC is when
it first starts. And um, if you'll remember Chuck from
our bicameralism episode, that's about the time people got their
their brain their consciousness in order and started to get

(04:22):
the superstitious because the gods had abandoned them. Interesting, I
think so too. I wonder if this has anything to
do with that. Yeah, I mean sure, it might have
just been part of that time. You know, why not
Julian James hypothesis wasn't scientific. I can add to it anyway.
I like, all right, so let's it's very smugged the

(04:43):
way he said that, I liked it. Uh, You're that
always reminds me and somebody hear the word smug when
Tom Cruise talked to Matt Lower about being smug. Oh, yeah, no,
I never saw that. Oh, it's one of the great
Of course, Matt Lower ended up being a creepy, so
I'm not defending him, but I think he was talking
about scientology and he just kept I don't know, he's
talking about glib Sorry, Yeah, that's right, I have seen that. Yeah,

(05:06):
good clip. All right, let's take a break and ponder
tom cruisiness and uh, we'll be back to talk about
curse tablets right after this. That's y s game that
you should know that we should know that knows. But

(05:27):
Josh Clark, so one of the things that people seem

(05:49):
to do, and this was like when when they were
in fashion, when curse tablets were in fashion, um, everybody
was into him. But it seems like one of the
things that you would do was like curse your rivals. Um,
sometimes your rival in politics, your rival in business. I
think some people cursed the rival chariot teams to their
favorite chariot teams, which is really lunkheaded, but it like

(06:13):
it just goes to show people have been lungheaded for
thousands of years, right, there's always been lucks. Yeah, your neighbors,
especially if you have some sort of dispute, anyone who
takes you to court. Um. And then also people um,
who are romantic rivals to somebody you like. I saw
one that basically said, may I think Helen be bound

(06:35):
when she tries to flirt with or have sex with
you know, the dude that I like, whatever his name was,
I don't remember, um, And that basically she was saying, like, please,
God's intervene and keep her from being able to perform
in the sack with um, Aristophanes, Let's say, who I'm

(06:57):
neverking was a man or Romulus, by the way, smells
bad and has a small pep. Yeah. But the whole
thing was, um, The whole thing was that you were
basically calling upon the gods. You were invoking the gods
to to do something bad to this person that you
did not like. Yeah. And uh So, as you would imagine,

(07:18):
if you had a lot of money, you were probably
more educated. You could probably spell and write these things yourself.
But if you were wealthy, you probably paid someone to
do it, maybe beautifully. Um, But like you said, all
stripes did it. So if you didn't have a lot
of money, that may have been one like on a
shard of clay, and you would go to you may
not be able to read or write, so you would

(07:38):
go to a magician, and these magician how is described
in this House of Works article, where like contract attorneys,
and they would kind of give you a template and
have blanks, and you know, say, fill in the blanks
with like who's your grievance? Uh? What's his name? Uh?
And what was the grievance? And then they would sort

(07:59):
of fill this thing in and Fred Flintstone style. And
apparently there were times even where they found some examples
of these square that the name or the grievance was
so long that they had to kind of squish it
in and on these template forms, which is really funny
that if you think about it. Yeah, and also it
sounds like an ancient mad lib, but magic mad lib basically, yeah, exactly.

(08:19):
So um, these things got so popular and so widespread
that in some of the Cursed tablets they'll find like
clauses that say, and if the other person finds out
that I've cursed them and they try to reverse curse me,
then I am rubber in their glue in that case,
and their curse will bounce off of me and stick

(08:41):
to them instead, right, And they would say, what is rubber.
I mean, let's let's just step back for a second.
Took or essentially talking about the same thing, a cursed
tablet and saying I'm rubber in your glue is basically
the same thing. I just think we should point that out. Yeah,
and it's funny. I do need to poke a little
fun in this article because I didn't include it for

(09:03):
your I should have included so you could have a laugh.
Year deleted it at the end. It was talking about
where these things kind of when they fell out of popularity.
It's like, well, some argue that even though they don't
do anymore, our society is still very much like this,
and just take a look at Twitter, a sort of
modern version of a curse stuff. I gotta laugh. Yeah, yeah,

(09:25):
I guess I kind of yeah, yeah, I think they
were cursing Twitter. Just then. Another thing too, is there
was a person interviewed that said that they were like
a magical arms race because there'd be curses counter curses,
amulets like the evil Eye, you know, or the eye
of Osiris, maybe the very famous like amulet or symbol

(09:47):
that was worn to ward off curses. Like I think
that was the rubber that you would wear so that
the curses would bounce off of you like I'm looking
at you, buddy, basically, and then that's it is. Tablets
gone for the better, short stuff out. Stuff you Should

(10:10):
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