Who Wrote Greek Curse Tablets?

Many scholars of ancient Greek religion would probably agree that the use of curse tablets in the ancient Mediterranean world 'cut across all social categories'. From a comparative perspective, it would be surprising if high levels of Greek literacy had been achieved by all social classes in classical and Hellenistic times. Greek literature, however, always represents these women using non-literary cursing techniques. While the use of figurines and spoken words were common features of ancient Greek cursing, specific mentions of curse writing are absent from classical and Hellenistic sources. According to Jordan, a single person from the mid-third century ce inscribed fifteen curse tablets and deposited them in two wells in the Athenian agora. Unlike many other ancient corpora, the corpus of ancient Greek and Latin curse tablets is in constant evolution. Since new evidence will likely come to light in the future, the study of curse tablets can afford bold hypotheses as well as falsification attempts