Curse tablet written in Gaulish found in ancient burial in Orléans

Twenty-one lead curse tablets have been discovered in the graves of an Gallo-Roman era cemetery in Orléans, France. One grave dating to the second half of the 2nd century was particularly notable for having a curse written in Gaulish. The language was used for centuries after the Roman conquest, but very few written examples of it survive, making this curse tablet extremely rare.

The Gallo-Roman necropolis was unearthed in a 2022 excavation at the site of the 18th century Porte Madeleine Hospital. The burial ground was in use from the end of the 1st century until the beginning of the 3rd. Archaeologists discovered more than 60 burials lined up along a wall. The deceased were all adult males and all inhumed. There were no women or children and no cremations. This unusual specificity suggests the burial ground was used exclusively by a particular group, perhaps members of a single profession. It was in grave F2199 that a tightly rolled lead tablet was found placed between the legs of the deceased.

Defixio (meaning curse in Latin) tablets were popular throughout the Greco-Roman world even well into the Christian era. People who had grudges against rivals in love and business and incredibly commonly, rival sports teams, would write incantations asking underworld deities to punish their enemies. Lead was the most commonly used medium. It is malleable, easily inscribed and easily rolled up. It also had symbolic significance as the cold, dark metal was considered to have a connection to the chthonic or underworld deities appealed to in curses.

The defixio in grave F2199 was folded and then rolled up. The lead sheet is very thin, and after having been rolled up tight for 2,000 years, it needed careful treatment to unfold it, remove corrosion and consolidate the surface with a clear-coating that would make it possible for researchers to study it without damaging it. Marks and letters were visible, inscribed on the soft surface of the lead with a stylus, but they were too faint to decipher with the naked. Researchers employed RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) to highlight the inscription in raking light. From those images, experts were able to read the Latin cursive script. They found it was written mostly in Gaulish words with some loan words from Greek and Latin.

Translating Gaulish is not straightforward, as it is an extinct language poorly represented on the archaeological record. It requires comparisons to other ancient Celtic languages like Old Irish and Old Breton to come up with plausible translations of some words. The work on the curse tablet is still going on, but the first proposed translation reads (original text in italics):

ib r…mi [m]arte rigisamu | a]nmantigIu To Mars the Royal, who pierces names

Se uiron bnanon uanderonado brixton sod-esti It is the bewitchment of these men and women below (named)

Cisin…piSSlon atlon atemiston who accomplished the unfortunate and unjust feat

Etic se-uiron banon canti piSSiantas and also all those who were accomplices of these men and women

Sollebne(m), Marulliam, Sulpici(i), Claudia(m), Marulliam g., Curiatiu(m), Mat|(e)rno(n), Tiberium, Cantognati, Sulpici(i), (B)regesia, Regina Italica pri(uata) Sulpici(i), Regina Regina, Regina dona Tibe(rius), [..]ix, Ateporigis, Lecti, (Se)gouisu(m)

The repeated name “Regina” is probably an invocation of the name of a deity. The others are believed to be Gallic proper names of the people targeted by the curse.

You can examine the RTI image of the unrolled tablet in this online viewer and explore a 3D scan of the entire grave F2199 below.