Search

Search Results

• To a beautiful soul. Inscriptions on lead mirrors (Collection of Roman Antiquities, Hungarian National Museum)

  101–113

  György Németh

  Ádám Szabó

  Views:

  117

  There is a collection of several hundred small Roman lead mirrors (former private collection) in the Hungarian National Museum. Greek or Latin inscriptions can be read on 17 mirrors. The present study publishes these items along with the drawings of the inscriptions. Such mirrors were found mainly in graves of women, functioning as escorts to the souls of the dead and as apotropaic amulets.

• 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.

• Circular Lead Tanks: A Suggestion

  137–143

  Dorottya Gáspár

  Views:

  44

  The question is how we can solve the inconsistency between the following two facts: 1. No baptistery has so far been found in Pannonia. 2. Christians lived in Pannonia at the same time. Upon different analogies (circular lead tanks, church at Zurzach) and examining the rite of the baptism I make hypostatical suggestion: fonts of wood, graves which never contained corpses.

• Firme di artisti / produttori di specchietti in piombo con superficie riflettente in vetro

  91–100

  Giulia Baratta

  Views:

  66

  In this short contribution we present lead mirrors with reflective glass surface that are characterized by the presence of the signature of the plumbarius and / or the creator of the form. These few but interesting epigraphic attestations allow some thoughts on how to produce this type of material and also on the people who were involved.

• Ancient cases of congenital disorders and their social causes

  57–69

  Dóra Pataricza

  Views:

  69

  More than 79 cases of children born with congenital defects are known from Greek and Roman literature. Although it is extremely difficult if not impossible to identify a single potential cause for it, attempts at explanation are already found in ancient writers. With the help of modern teratological science many teratogenous causes can partly be identified. Some of the most probable factors among these were the same as today: malnutrition, viruses, alcohol, vitamin deficiencies etc., but lead poisoning has to be taken also into account as a principal cause.

• Escribiendo una defixio: los textos de maldición a través de sus soportes

  79–93

  Celia Sánchez Natalías

  Views:

  97

  The aim of this paper is to analyze binding curse tablets found in the Latin West from a material perspective, in order to rethink their multifaceted nature, since sometimes – but not always – defixiones are inscribed pieces of lead.

• Überlegungen zum vermeintlichen Aufenthalt von Galla Placidia im Diokletianpalast in Split

  141–154

  Mirjana Sanader

  Views:

  99

  This paper has two objectives. Firstly, based on Philostorgius' (HE XII,13) claims that the army of Theodosius II crossed Pannonia and Illyricum during the campaign in 424. against the usurper John. This unusually long route to Dalmatia will be examined and considered. In the scientific literature, information can sometimes be found that Galla Placidia had sojourned in the palace of the former Roman Emperor Diocletian in Split during the winter of 424/425. These data lead to the second goal of this paper, namely, to examine possible evidence for such an assertion.

• The Magical Fomula on a Lost Uterine Amulet

  111–114

  Edina Gradvohl

  Views:

  74

  The article tries to reconstruct the inscription of a magical gem found in 1883 in Torontál which went lost by now. For this reconstructive work I used other gem inscriptions and also other magical papyri and lead tablets in order to compare the two types of texts. The inscription contains the Soroor-logos and the Gigantorekta barophita-logos as well. The gem and the inscription together were used for the protection of the uterus.

• Cursed horses

  109–115.

  György Németh

  Edina Gradvohl

  Views:

  59

  A small lead tablet with the drawing of a horse’s head is kept in the collection of the Musée Bargoin in Clermont-Ferrand. This study examines depictions of horses on curse tablets and magic gems and concludes that no examples of such depictions have been found so far.