Abstrakt
Curse tablets are very specific artefacts. These thin sheets made of metal (mainly lead or its alloys) were magical instrument to harm a rival in love, trial, sport, etc.
Most of them bear the text of the curse, mostly in Greek or Latin. The curse tablets were made and used from the sixth century BC to at least the sixth century AD and were mainly placed in graves, temples, water reservoirs and sport facilities.
On the turn of the Common Era, the new phenomenon on curse tablets occurred. It can be called a magical drawing.
These drawings pictured bound people or invoked demons and oriental gods (e.g.: Seth). Especially in the Late Antiquity, these drawings were more common on the curse tablets.
Great number of tablets with drawings were discovered in Rome on two sites: under Porta San Sebastiano and in the Fountain of Anna Perenna. Both sites are dated to the fourth century AD, but their archaeological status is very different.
The tablets from Porta San Sebastiano were found in a burial context of sarcophagus and columbarium. On the other side, Fountain of Anna Perenna was a place for magical activities, behind the city walls.
The paper will present the drawings dated to the Late Antiquity and their archaeological contexts. The main corpus of the paper comes from Rome.
The typological study of the drawings will be introduced to explain who is depicted and in what positions. If and how the drawings change site to site.
By analysing of the text, the question "How much the drawings correlate to the textual invocations" should be answered.