荷兰小镇下发现的近 2000 年前的罗马诅咒石板可能蕴含埃及魔法

一小片铅上有魔法符号和四个名字。

来源:ZME科学

The dead were never entirely silent in the Roman world.人们有时会在道路、寺庙、浴室和坟墓下面隐藏一些信息,这些信息不是为了生者,而是为了想象中居住在地下的力量。在荷兰南部的海尔伦,考古学家现在发现了其中一条信息:一小块铅,上面刻有希腊字母、魔法符号和四个被奴役者的名字。

这块石碑是在海尔伦市政厅广场下方的一个坑中发现的,其历史可以追溯到公元二世纪。当时,欧洲的这个角落属于罗马下日耳曼尼亚行省。 The sheet is tiny, roughly the size of a credit card.然而,它所承载的戏剧性远大于其本身。

The inscription may have asked supernatural forces to harm four enslaved men and women. Or it may have been written on their behalf, calling on gods and demons to strike someone else.

荷兰城市下的罗马小镇

现代海尔伦位于科里奥瓦卢姆 (Coriovallum) 山顶,科里奥瓦卢姆 (Coriovallum) 是罗马军事定居点,位于比利时大道 (Via Belgica) 沿线,这条道路连接通厄伦 (Tongeren) 周边地区与科隆 (Cologne) 地区。

Coriovallum 并不是一潭死水。 Its Roman baths, excavated in the 1940s, remain the largest visible Roman ruins in the Netherlands. Now, the curse tablet adds a more intimate relic to that monumental landscape.

该文物最终被送往海德堡大学纸莎草学研究所,研究人员在那里使用反射变换成像。 The method works by photographing the same surface under many different lights, then combining the images so faint scratches become legible.

The inscription was unusual for a Roman frontier town in the Netherlands.北欧发现的大多数咒语板都是用拉丁文写的,但这一块是用希腊语写的。 Its wording and symbols also point to Egyptian-style magic, a tradition that had spread widely through the Roman Empire by the second century.

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Lead, Magic and the Business of Revenge