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The tablets were meant to call upon the gods for assistance in seeking justice and were popular throughout the Roman world. [13] In the case of the Bath curse tablets the written formulae inscribed on the tablets were addressed to the goddess Sulis, who had the power to identify the thief and exact punishment. [14]
Sulis was the local goddess of the thermal springs that still feed the spa baths at Bath, which the Romans called Aquae Sulis ("the waters of Sulis"). [5] Sulis was likely venerated as a healing divinity, whose sacred hot springs could cure physical or spiritual suffering and illness. [6]
Eyguieres curse tablet. A curse tablet (Latin: tabella defixionis, defixio; Greek: κατάδεσμος, romanized: katadesmos) is a small tablet with a curse written on it from the Greco-Roman world. Its name originated from the Greek and Latin words for "pierce" [1] and "bind". The tablets were used to ask the gods, place spirits, or the ...
About 130 messages to Sulis scratched onto lead curse tablets have been recovered from the Sacred Spring by archaeologists. [4] Most of them were written in Latin, although one discovered was in Brythonic; they usually laid curses upon those whom the writer felt had done them wrong. This collection is the most important found in Britain.
Tomlin published the first translation of the curse-tablets from the Roman Baths at Aquae Sulis (Bath, UK) in 1988. [3] Tomlin translated the Bloomberg tablets , a collection of 405 wooden tablets inscribed with ink, found between 2010 and 2013, during excavations for the Bloomberg building in London. [ 4 ]
In 1979–80, the Bath curse tablets were found at the site of Aquae Sulis (now Bath in England). [37] All but one of the 130 tablets concerned the restitution of stolen goods. [ 38 ] Over 80 similar tablets have been discovered in and about the remains of a temple to Mercury nearby, at West Hill, Uley , [ 39 ] making south-western Britain one ...
The spirits of watery places were honoured as givers of life and as links between the physical realm and the other world. Sequana, for example, seems to have embodied the River Seine at its spring source, and Sulis appears to have been one and the same as the hot spring at Bath, Somerset, (Roman Aquae Sulis) not simply its guardian or possessor.
Aquae Arnemetiae and Aquae Sulis (modern town of Bath in Somerset) were the only two Roman bath towns in Britain. The Romans built a bath at the location of the main thermal spring. In the late 17th-century Cornelius White operated bathing facilities at the hot spring at the site of the Buxton Old Hall. In 1695 he discovered an ancient smooth ...