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• Magic Symbols (Charaktêres) on North African Curse Tablets as a Regional Feature

  199–215.

  György Németh

  Views:

  168

  This study examines the practice of magic symbols in North Africa to find out whether there was a regional peculiarity in the use of charaktêres that distinguished this area from other parts of the Roman Empire. Two phenomena appear to be more common in North Africa, though they may also occur elsewhere: first, charaktêres as encrypted names, and second, charaktêres as framing devices. First and foremost, though, some introductory remarks concerning charaktêres in general are made.

• Continuities in late antique literacy: the evidence from North Africa and Gaul

  177–185

  Zsuzsanna Várhelyi

  Views:

  53

  In this article I reconsider the evidence for ancient literacy from late antique North Africa and Gaul in order to reassess how the end of the “epigraphic habit” in the third century may have changed the popular contexts and notional associations of writing. Analyzing evidence for the Christian “epitaphic habit,” as well as for the production of legal and economic documents between the third and sixth centuries CE, I propose that late antique uses of writing attest to numerous continuities with their early imperial counterparts, including an interest not only in the pragmatic but also the performative character of ancient literacy.

• Mala bestia foras dato. Spelling mistakes and loan phrases as means of interpretation of a Latin magical text

  37–48

  Andrea Barta

  Views:

  592

  In 1911, Auguste Audollent received a lead tablet with a Latin inscription on both sides coming from North Africa. It was lying almost undetected and forgotten for nearly one hundred years until the Hungarian visiting professor György Németh rediscovered it in the storage room of the Musée Bargoin in Clermont-Ferrand, France. The recently finished complete reading of the text and its commentary will be published soon by Gy. Németh and the author of the present paper. This article aims to consider all the word forms and phrases of the tablet which differ from the Latin standard in order to look for an answer if the target, the context and the sources can be identified with the help of linguistic tools.

• A Curse Against the Greens

  117–121.

  György Németh

  Andrea Barta

  Views:

  106

  The curse tablet presented in this study is part of the collection of Musée Bargoin in Clermont-Ferrand. After its discovery in 1906, it was forwarded to Auguste Audollent for examination. However, no scholarly investigation has been conducted on the tablet since then, and it has not been published, save for a short reference. The tablet, as indicated by its inscription, may have been made with the intent of influencing the outcome of a North African chariot race involving the Green team.