The Bathcurse tablets are a collection of about 130 Roman era curse tablets discovered in 1979/1980 in the English city of Bath. The tablets invoke the intercession of the goddessSulis Minerva in the return of stolen goods and to curse the perpetrators of the thefts. Inscribed mostly in British Latin, they have been used to attest to the everyday spoken vernacular of the Romano-British population of the second to fourth centuries A.D. They have also been recognised by UNESCO in its Memory of the World UK Register.
Discovery and description
The Roman baths and temple dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva in the English city of Bath were excavated between 1978 and 1983 by a team led by Barry Cunliffe and Peter Davenport. In 1979/1980, around 130 tablets were discovered in an excavation of the "Sacred Spring" under the King's Bath. The spring had been temporarily diverted to facilitate the excavation, revealing a huge array of Roman era items including the tablets. The tablets, some in a fragmentary state, were small and rectangular and initially were assumed to be made of lead, although subsequent metallurgical analysis revealed that they are, in fact, made of lead alloyed with tin, with occasional traces of copper. Some of the tablets were cast under pressure into thin, flexible sheets with a finish as smooth as paper whereas others appear to have been roughly hammered out from a molten lump. Most of the tablets were inscribed, either with Roman capitals or with cursive script, but the expertise of the lettering varied. Some of the tablets had markings that appear to be an illiterate imitation of lettering, for example repetitive lines of crosses or sevens, and some were completely blank. The inscriptions on the tablets were published in full in 1988 by historian Roger Tomlin. The tablets themselves are on public display at the Roman Baths Museum in Bath.
Inscriptions
The tablets were identified as “curse tablets” dating from the second to fourth centuries A.D. Curse tablets are small metal sheets inscribed with curses against specific people and were used in popular magic throughout the Roman world.
Language
Most of the inscriptions are in colloquial Latin, and specifically in the Vulgar Latin of the Romano-British population, known as "British Latin". Two of the inscriptions are in a language which is not Latin, although they use Roman lettering, and may be in a British Celtic language. If this should be the case, they would be the only examples of a written ancient British Celtic language; however, there is not yetscholarly consensus on their decipherment.
Content
All but one of the 130 Bath curse tablets concern the restitution of stolen goods and are a type of curse tablet known as "prayers for justice". The complained of thefts are generally of personal possessions from the baths such as jewellery, gemstones, money, household goods and especially clothing. Theft from public baths appears to have been a common problem as it was a well-known Roman literary stereotype and severe laws existed to punish the perpetrators. Most of the depositors of the tablets appear to have been from the lower social classes. The inscriptions generally follow the same formula, suggesting it was taken from a handbook: the stolen property is declared as having been transferred to a deity so that the loss becomes the deity’s loss; the suspect is named and, in 21 cases, so is the victim; the victim then asks the deity to visit afflictions on the thief not as a punishment but to induce the thief to hand the stolen items back. The deity whose help was invoked is Sulis, and the tablets were deposited by the victims in the spring that was sacred to her.
Examples
A typical example reads: The formula "whether man or woman or whether slave or free" is typical, and the following example is unusual in two respects. Firstly it adds the words "whether pagan or Christian" and secondly the text was written in reversed lettering: Many name the suspected thieves: Some of the inscriptions are very specific in the afflictions requested and reveal the intensity of the victim's anger: One of the suspected British Celtic inscriptions has been translated as: An alternative translation of the above inscription is:
Significance
The Bath curse tablets are the most important record of Romano-British religion yet published. Curse tablets are of particular use in evidencing the Vulgar Latin of everyday speech, and, since their publication in 1988, the Bath inscriptions have been used as evidence of the nature of British Latin. Additionally, the contents of the inscriptions have been used as evidence of popular attitudes to crime and the system of justice. In 2014, the Bath curse tablets were recognised by UNESCO in its Memory of the World UK Register.
