1,700-Year-Old Curse Found at Bottom of Well

Nearly two millennia ago, someone got really upset after a shopping spree through the markets of the ancient city of Antioch. That person was so upset that he or she took the trouble to inscribe a curse on a thin lead tablet, and then drop it in a wishing well in the center of the town.

This is the first time that investigators uncover such a curse being directed at a representative of such a benign profession. Other tablets containing similar writings are usually directed towards charioteers or gladiators, who were more likely to get people annoyed.

The tablet was not discovered recently. Archaeologists dug it up at the Antioch site back in the 1930s, but it was only a short time ago that University of Washington professor Alexander Hollmann managed to translate it in its entirety.

At this point, the curse is displayed at the Princeton University Art Museum. Experts say that the ancient city was one of the largest in the entire Roman Empire. It is now located in the southeastern parts of Turkey, near the country's borders with Syria, LiveScience reports.

Somewhere in this city, simple greengrocer selling fruits and vegetables managed to upset someone so much that that person decided to call on Iao for retribution. Iao is the Greek name for the god of the Old Testament, Yahweh.

In the text, the author named the greengrocer Babylas as the target of his revenge. The tablet also lists Babylas' mother, called Dionysia, and says that she is also known as Hesykhia. Details of the translation appear in the latest issue of the journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.

“O thunder-and-lightning-hurling Iao, strike, bind, bind together Babylas the greengrocer. As you struck the chariot of Pharaoh, so strike his [Babylas'] offensiveness,” the text at the top of one of the sides of the tablet reads.

“O thunder – and-lightning-hurling Iao, as you cut down the firstborn of Egypt, cut down his [livestock?] as much as...” the text added somewhere else, although the next parts are lost.

According to Hollmann, the one who wrote the curse may have used the Old Testament as a reference because it was such a powerful text at the time. The author was first thought to be a Jew cursing a Christian, but more detailed examinations of the text and other cultural references provided no evidence for such a scenario.