What Were Ancient Greco-Roman Curse Tablets?

(history.com)

18 points | by speckx 4 days ago

6 comments

  • rapidaneurism 18 hours ago
    https://archive.ph/Kqh0h

    It seems to redirect based on location, and the article cannot be accessed

  • SockThief 20 hours ago
    That link forcefully redirects me to different site: https://historytv.pl/

    Despite me blocking scripts, mind you.

    • dvh 19 hours ago
      It redirects me to www. hearstnetworks .com

      Probably some kind of error 451 monetization fallback

  • virgil_disgr4ce 20 hours ago
    > Archaeologists have recovered more than 1,500 of these historic hexes that were secretly directed at rivals

    If only we had the ancient greco-roman newspapers archived so we could check and see if any of the hexes worked

    • InsideOutSanta 20 hours ago
      Well, I haven't seen Eucherios the charioteer win any races recently, so...
    • tolciho 17 hours ago
      Probably not, given that "Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer" by Francis Galton in 1872 found that, spoilers, royalty does not live longer despite the presumably millions of subjects praying for their health and longevity. From this we might go out on a limb and guess that a negative prayer for external results fares no better than a positive prayer for external results. It may, however, be prudent not to mention such failures to the CEO when they want you to recite the corporate mission statement from memory.

      Another question might be why it took until 1872 to run the numbers, unless there's a clay tablet somewhere that documents similar results.

    • analog8374 18 hours ago
      The hex-manufacturers owned the newspapers. Therefore all modern, right-thinking people agreed that hexes are serious business.
  • shae 18 hours ago
    Curse Tablets are early LLM skills?
  • joe_mamba 19 hours ago
    Return the slab.

    Or suffer my curse.

  • yieldcrv 20 hours ago
    > The idea behind curse tablets is that my situation will improve if I can ‘bind’ somebody, make them unattractive, ineffective in speech, make their chariot wheel fall off

    hmm, well, has anybody tried it? binding a curse on lead sheet to make a chariot wheel fall off?

    everyone that manifests, or prays, or wishes become enamored with their chosen concept when a tangentially related improbability occurs that they retroactively assign to their wish. the predictive quality is zero but the retroactive attribution feels good, and the failures are attributed to yourself for not manifesting, praying or wishing hard enough - or building a value system more congruent with the metaphysical framework.

    I’m curious why they fell out of disuse? Just the fall of the roman empire?

    Seems like a resurgence in magical thinking could make these really popular. There is a high chance that all religious and magic beliefs were made more palatable to appeal to broader populations, so the “true” version would seem both archaic and lost to time, there is demand for hints at what may be the true thing.

    • svilen_dobrev 17 hours ago
      they should have been betting on that. Poly-market style. With high-enough bets.. improbability may suddenly reduce..