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  • To a beautiful soul. Inscriptions on lead mirrors (Collection of Roman Antiquities, Hungarian National Museum)
    101–113
    Views:
    102

    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
    Views:
    557

    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
    Views:
    32

    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
    Views:
    32

    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
    Views:
    43

    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
    Views:
    74

    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.

  • The Magical Fomula on a Lost Uterine Amulet
    111–114
    Views:
    53

    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.

  • Überlegungen zum vermeintlichen Aufenthalt von Galla Placidia im Diokletianpalast in Split
    141–154
    Views:
    38

    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.