3rd century love charm

[Caballo]

Came across this to cheer you up on a Monday morning= a love charm from Oxyrhynchus.

To quote from the site

This earthenware bowl is inscribed horizontally around its circumference with a magical love-charm to attract the favours of one Matrona daughter of Tagene to the smitten Theodorus son of Techosis, who commissioned the charm. The bowl came from a cemetery at Oxyrhynchus where it had been entrusted for communication to the powers of the underworld. The letter-shapes are familiar from documentary texts of the third and fourth centuries. The writing follows the horizontal ridges formed by the throwing of the pot as though guide-lines for writing.
The text of the love charm on the bowl is identical with that inscribed on two defixiones, inscribed love-curses on lead tablets (image).

All three were found together with another terracotta bowl, uninscribed but stuffed with an extended love-charm written on papyrus, which was further wrapped around two humanoid figures formed out of wax, holding each other in a sympathetic embrace (publ. D.Wortmann, Bonner Jahrb. 168, 1968, 56ff.; ZPE 72, 1988, 245ff.):

The earthen ware bowl (love charm inside)


The love charm still wrapped


The love charm half unwrapped showing the human figures


The lovers (or perhaps more likely, would be lovers)

[Caius Valens]

I wondered if it worked :wink:

[zakhx150]

What a fantastic piece! If this was in Papyri Graecae Magicae I never noticed these great pictures with it. Reminds me of the two waxen figures shown in Warrior,V. 2006 Roman Religion rolled up in a papyrus...

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Do you by any chance know if it also was published in P.Oxy ? and which volume ? i might seek it out then !!

M.VIB.M.