Books by Jessica Lamont
In Blood and Ashes Lamont: Curse Tablets and Binding Spells in Ancient Greece, 2023
Full text available here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-blood-and-ashes-978019751778... more Full text available here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-blood-and-ashes-9780197517789?cc=us&lang=en&#
From binding spells and incantations to curse-writing rituals, magic pervaded the ancient Greek world. In Blood and Ashes provides the first historical study of the development and dissemination of ritualized curse practice from 750-250 BCE, documenting the cultural pressures that drove the use of curse tablets, charms, spells, and other private rites. This book expands our understanding of daily life in ancient communities, showing how individuals were making sense of the world and coping with conflict, vulnerability, competition, anxiety, desire, and loss, all while conjuring the gods and powers of the Underworld.
Bringing together epigraphic, literary, archaeological, and material evidence, Jessica L. Lamont reads between traditional histories of Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic Greece, drawing out new voices and new narratives to consider: here are the cooks, tavern keepers, garland weavers, helmsmen, barbers, and other persons who often slip through the cracks of ancient history. The texts and objects presented here offer glimpses of public and private lives across many centuries, illuminating the interplay of ritual and conflict-management strategies among citizens and slaves, men and women, pagans and Christians. Filled with new material and insights, Lamont's volume offers a groundbreaking perspective on ancient Greek social history and religion, highlighting the role of ritual in negotiating life's uncertainties.
Publications (Peer-Reviewed) by Jessica Lamont
Journal of Hellenic Studies 143, 2023
Full text available here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-hellenic-studies/art... more Full text available here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-hellenic-studies/article/trade-literacy-and-documentary-histories-of-the-northern-black-sea/EA6C65368E57AE06A4B2CF21E953F060
The northern coast of the Black Sea has produced an abundance of documentary texts dating from the sixth through fourth centuries BC. Of great value to the epigraphist and historian are dozens of Greek letters, receipts and curses inscribed on lead and ceramic media. When placed in dialogue with one another, these texts yield new insights into daily life and literacy in communities for which literary sources are scant or absent. They document the bustling trade in saltfish, enslaved persons and textiles, and the web of relations between Greek and non-Greek individuals in north Pontic cities, from marriage to commercial ties with indigenous groups of the Pontic interior. This article demonstrates how trade could drive literacy in non-elite communities of the northern Black Sea. Literacy and mercantile activity were very much entwined, and developed in parallel with one another and with other civic and social institutions within these port communities.
Hesperia 92.2, 2023
Full text available here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/901601
Co-authored with Jaime Curbera, Ins... more Full text available here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/901601
Co-authored with Jaime Curbera, Inscriptiones Graecae
This article publishes 25 lead tablets recovered during systematic excavations of the Athenian Agora, 24 of which were inscribed with curses. All objects date from the 4th century b.c. and emerged in three discrete contexts: beneath the Tholos, in the southern Industrial District, and in the well beside the so-called Crossroads Enclosure. These tablets expand and complicate our understanding of Athenian curse-writing rituals during the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic periods, while shedding new light on onomastics, prosopography, ritual space, and social history in 4th-century Athens.
Hesperia 90.1, 2021
presents book-length studies in the fields of Greek archaeology, art, language, and history. Foun... more presents book-length studies in the fields of Greek archaeology, art, language, and history. Founded in 1937, the series was originally designed to accommodate extended essays too long for inclusion in Hesperia. Since that date the Supplements have established a strong identity of their own, featuring single-author monographs, excavation reports, and edited collections on topics of interest to researchers in classics, archaeology, art history, and Hellenic studies. Back issues of Hesperia and Hesperia Supplements are electronically archived in JSTOR (www.jstor.org), where all but the most recent titles may be found. For order information and a complete list of titles, see the ASCSA website (www.ascsa.edu.gr). The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, established in 1881, is a research and teaching institution dedicated to the advanced study of the archaeology, art, history, philosophy, language, and literature of Greece and the Greek world.
Classical Philology 116.4, 2021
All things are full of gods. S O SAID THALES, according to Aristotle. 1 Yet Thales and Aristotle ... more All things are full of gods. S O SAID THALES, according to Aristotle. 1 Yet Thales and Aristotle would surely have admitted that within the ancient city-polytheistic and numinous though it was-some gods were simply less prominent than others. Elusive in Greek cult and ritual, it would seem, were the towering figures of early Greek myth: the Titans and various clans of giants. 2 Indeed, the place of the primordial Titans and, to a lesser extent, groups like the Hekatoncheires and Aloadai, seems broadly confined to Archaic theogonic poetry. Some late, Kronos-centric examples aside, the Titans appear to be largely absent from ritual practice by the Classical period. 3 Jan Bremmer in his thorough 2008 study of the Titans conceded that the Greeks never "attached a certain importance to Kronos," much less his Titanic siblings; in this he echoed the earlier observations of Ulrich von Wilamowitz and Martin Nilsson. 4 This article demonstrates that the Titans and giants were present in Classical Athens and the wider Greek Mediterranean, in ways more complex than the With gratitude, I thank Chris Faraone for his edits and support in all stages of this project; thanks are also owed to the generous Robert Lamberton, Andrej Petrovic, Nick Kauffman, and Erika Weiberg, all of whom read earlier drafts of this article and improved it in various ways. The paper benefitted from the comments of audiences at Yale (2017), Toronto (2017), and Boston College (MACTe, especially the helpful response [and pastries] of Hanne Eisenfeld). Jaime Curbera kindly shared his drawings (fig. 1) from the Wünsch collection. Finally, I thank the two reviewers for their careful edits, and the CP team for their help on the way to publication. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. This article was finalized in 2018 and, apart from the new textual edition of Lamont 2021, content and bibliography reflect that timeline. 1. DA 411 a7-8 5 DK11 A22. 2. I take Hesiod's definition of the Titans to include:
Classical Antiquity 40.1, 2021
This article presents a remarkable cache of five Attic curse tablets, four of which are published... more This article presents a remarkable cache of five Attic curse tablets, four of which are published here for the first time. Excavated in situ in a pyre-grave outside the Athenian Long Walls, the texts employ very similar versions of a single binding curse. After situating the cache in its archaeological context, all texts are edited with a full epigraphic commentary. A discussion then follows, in which the most striking features of the texts are highlighted: in addition to the peculiar "first four-year period" (πρώτη πενθετηρίς) that the curses were meant to outlast, and the unparalleled term κυνωτόν, these texts are unusual in that they preserve over a full line of dactylic hexameter. The metrical formulae, combined with the presence of deictic language, may suggest that parts of the archetype curse underpinning these texts once circulated orally, in performative ritual contexts. The cache affords a singular glimpse into the process of cursecreation around 400 BCE, especially the ways in which a curse-writer could customize a fixed template spell to suit a client's needs and circumstances. These tablets illuminate the shadowy process behind the creation of Athenian curse tablets, and the growing traffic in "magic" by the end of the fifth century BCE.
American Journal of Archaeology 125.2, 2021
This article publishes a cast-lead figurine from the early fourth century BCE, excavated in a til... more This article publishes a cast-lead figurine from the early fourth century BCE, excavated in a tile grave on the Cycladic island of Paros. The figurine was pierced with seven iron nails, the arms were bound behind the back, and a lead collar shackled the neck. Inscriptions on the body in the epichoric Parian alphabet suggest that the object was produced locally. The aggressive nailing, binding, shackling, inscribing, and modulation of the figurine, combined with the mortuary context and abundant parallels, suggest that the object was ritual in nature, implicated as an effigy (κολοσσός, Rachepuppe, or so-called voodoo doll) in a binding curse. Examination of the object in relation to the growing corpus of curse effigies sheds new light on private curse rituals, onomastics, the local Parian script, and notions of sexuality and competition in the classical Aegean. 1 introduction On 25 July 1983, excavations in the port of Paroikia on Paros recovered an inscribed lead figurine in a grave made of roof tiles (fig. 1). The figurine is now on display in the Paros Archaeological Museum (fig. 2a-e). 2 The body was pierced with seven iron nails: one through the mouth, one through each eye, three through the skull, and one through the anus. The arms were pinned behind the back, and a lead shackle bound the neck. Inscriptions on the body in the epichoric Parian alphabet suggest that the object was crafted locally (figs. 3, 4). The aggressive nailing, binding, shackling, inscribing, and modulation of the figurine, combined with the mortuary context and abundant parallels, suggest that the object was ritual in nature, implicated as an effigy (κολοσσός, Rachepuppe, or so-called voodoo doll) in a binding curse. The figurine aimed to curse an individual named Theophrastos and is the first attestation of binding magic on Paros. From the Archaic period on, Greeks across the Mediterranean are known to have fashioned, bound, and buried effigies of lead, bronze, wax, clay, flour, and wood in order to 1 I thank Photeini Zapheiropoulou, Apostolos Papadimitriou, Konstantinos Alexiou, Christina Damatopoulou, Dimitrios Grimanelis, and the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades for their invaluable help and for the granting of needed permissions. Milette Gaifman, Alan Shapiro, and Dustin Dixon read earlier drafts of this article and improved it. I am grateful to Editor-in-Chief Jane B. Carter, in addition to Anne Duray, Meg Sneeringer, and the three anonymous reviewers for the AJA for their useful edits. Christopher Faraone called my attention to an earlier study of this figurine and offered encouragement throughout the publication process (including sharing images when libraries and museums closed due to the pandemic); Kirk Ormand discussed relevant scholarship on Greek sexuality, and Jaime Curbera discussed a sketch of an additional effigy, once in the Wünsch collection. Finally, I thank my dear friend and colleague Georgia Boundouraki, who provided help and the best of company for the duration of this project. Translations and figures are my own unless otherwise noted. 2 Paros Archaeological Museum B 5984; excav. Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cyclades 1983, see Zapheiropoulou 1983, excavation notebook, 78.
TAPA 151.1, 2021
Full text available here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/790101
Greece & Rome [Special Issue: Curse Tablets in the Wider Realms of Execrations, Commerce, Law, and Technology], 2021
This article examines the relationship between oral traditions of cursing and the oldest Greek cu... more This article examines the relationship between oral traditions of cursing and the oldest Greek curse tablets from Selinous and Himera in western Sicily. As much early Greek writing is thought to record or reflect the spoken word, it is perhaps unexpected that these early Sicilian texts carry few signs of orality or speech. There are no verbs of speaking, incanting, cursing, singing, binding; no deictic language; no metre. Rather, the oldest curse tablets in the Greek world show clear signs of written literacy. Sicilian curse tablets from 500-450 BCE employ verbs of writing to curse their victims (ἐνγράwω, 'I inscribe'; καταγράwω, 'I write down'; ἀπογράwω, 'I enrol'), and exhibit textual distortion, scribal symbols, abbreviations, and columnar lists of namesfeatures that ground these texts in the realm of writing. It is suggested that Greek curse practice developed alongside and in response to the spread of legal writing in the late sixth-century law courts of western Sicily.
Inscriptions and the Epigraphic Habit: The Epigraphic Cultures of Greece, Rome, and Beyond. Brill Studies in Greek and Roman Epigraphy, eds R. Benefiel and C. Keesling.
Full text and volume available here: https://brill.com/display/title/69091?language=en
Curses in Contexts III: The Greek Curse Tablets of the Classical and Hellenistic Periods, ed. C. Faraone and I. Polinskaya. Papers and Monographs from the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 2021
This chapter explores the relationship between Athenian curse tablets and a contemporary, private... more This chapter explores the relationship between Athenian curse tablets and a contemporary, private ritual practice known only from the archaeological record: pyre deposits. Here "pyre deposit" refers to a small assemblage of specific ceramic vessel types (often miniatures) and burnt material (bone, ash, charcoal) ritually buried in a shallow sub-floor pit (Rotroff 2013). In context and chronology, the earliest pyres recall early Attic curse tablets: both emerge in graves of the Kerameikos in the final decades of the 5th century BCE, and proliferate over the course of the 4th century, appearing also in non-mortuary contexts. At least seven inscribed curses emerge in connection with Attic pyre deposits, seemingly buried on the same ritual occasion; all date from the 4th century BCE, and are inscribed on both lead and ceramic media. These assemblages are catalogued and discussed below, as they raise an important question: What, if anything, was the relationship between these two ritual practices? Curse tablets and pyre deposits correspond so closely in chronology and depositional context that it is tempting to ask whether they somehow evolved in tandem, or reflect social attitudes that sought new forms of interaction with chthonic deities, the supernatural, or the dead. These questions have broader implications for ritualized cursing, and the ways in which curse practice could evolve and diversify over time in a single polis. It seems that over the course of the 4th century BCE, curse-writing rituals came to adopt some features of pyre deposits (and vice versa), and may have been performed by the same practitioners.
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 200.1 (2019), 43-53, 2019
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 200.1 (2019), 43-53
New Approaches to the Materiality of Text in the Ancient Mediterranean From Monuments and Buildings to Small Portable Objects, 2023
Volume available here (under copyright): https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503601564-1
New... more Volume available here (under copyright): https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503601564-1
New Approaches to the Materiality of Text in the Ancient Mediterranean
From Monuments and Buildings to Small Portable Objects
The Empire of Aksum was one of Africa’s most influential ancient civilisations. Traditionally, mo... more The Empire of Aksum was one of Africa’s most influential ancient civilisations. Traditionally, most archaeological fieldwork has focused on the capital city of Aksum, but recent research at the site of Beta Samati has investigated a contemporaneous trade and religious centre located between Aksumand the Red Sea.The authors outline the discovery of the site and present important finds from the initial excavations, including an early basilica, inscriptions and a gold intaglio ring. From daily life and ritual praxis to international trade, this work illuminates the role of Beta Samati as an administrative centre and its significance within the wider Aksumite world.
Popular Religion and Ritual in Prehistoric and Ancient Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean, 2018
Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 196 (2015)
in _Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica._ Margaret M. Miles, ed. Oxbow Press 2015, pp. 37-50., 2015
With the Peloponnesian War came great change and tumult. In Athens, the demos was confronted by w... more With the Peloponnesian War came great change and tumult. In Athens, the demos was confronted by war, plague, and both the overthrow and reinstallation of the democracy. Religion during these dynamic years was not a static performed; religion experienced change alongside other institutions. It comes as no surprise, then, that the last quarter Athenian religious sphere. Although traditional polytheistic pantheons, a case can be made that Athens experienced an atypical surge in a new, specialized type of deity at this time: the healing hero and his distinct incubation cult. 1 The sudden emergence of deities concerned with health was at work in Athenian society; this was manifest in the near simultaneous foundation of several healing cults across Attica in a period of less than ten years. 2 This paper addresses the questions of where, when and how the healing god Asklepios was absorbed into the Attic pantheon, focusing in particular on an understudied sanctuary, the Piraeus Asklepieion. By synthesizing excavation reports and a constellation of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic material, this unpublished sanctuary can be resurrected from the concrete under which it currently lies buried. After examining the sanctuary as it reemerged in the late 19th century AD, this paper charts a chronology for the cult's establishment. The workings of the cult and, lastly, the mechanisms by which Asklepios was incorporated into the Attic community will be illuminated. Crucial to his links between the deities sharing the temenos, regardless of how subconsciously the ritual actions were performed.
Museum Publications by Jessica Lamont
Africa and Byzantium, ed. A. Achi. Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications. Africa and Byzantium Exhibition: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023
The Berlin Painter & His World, ed. M. Padgett. Yale University Press, 2017
CONDITION: Mended from fragments, with minor in-painting of cracks and small fra ctures on the up... more CONDITION: Mended from fragments, with minor in-painting of cracks and small fra ctures on the upper body. Below the figures, the lower half of the vase is missing, including the foot. This red-figure vase is 1houghr to be one of rhe Berlin Painter 's earlies! amphorae of Panachenaic shape. 1 Th e vessel has the proportions and form of an official Panathenaic prize amphora, yet departs from th e conventional size, technique (black-figure), and iconography (striding Athena, scenes of sport).
Uploads
Books by Jessica Lamont
From binding spells and incantations to curse-writing rituals, magic pervaded the ancient Greek world. In Blood and Ashes provides the first historical study of the development and dissemination of ritualized curse practice from 750-250 BCE, documenting the cultural pressures that drove the use of curse tablets, charms, spells, and other private rites. This book expands our understanding of daily life in ancient communities, showing how individuals were making sense of the world and coping with conflict, vulnerability, competition, anxiety, desire, and loss, all while conjuring the gods and powers of the Underworld.
Bringing together epigraphic, literary, archaeological, and material evidence, Jessica L. Lamont reads between traditional histories of Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic Greece, drawing out new voices and new narratives to consider: here are the cooks, tavern keepers, garland weavers, helmsmen, barbers, and other persons who often slip through the cracks of ancient history. The texts and objects presented here offer glimpses of public and private lives across many centuries, illuminating the interplay of ritual and conflict-management strategies among citizens and slaves, men and women, pagans and Christians. Filled with new material and insights, Lamont's volume offers a groundbreaking perspective on ancient Greek social history and religion, highlighting the role of ritual in negotiating life's uncertainties.
Publications (Peer-Reviewed) by Jessica Lamont
The northern coast of the Black Sea has produced an abundance of documentary texts dating from the sixth through fourth centuries BC. Of great value to the epigraphist and historian are dozens of Greek letters, receipts and curses inscribed on lead and ceramic media. When placed in dialogue with one another, these texts yield new insights into daily life and literacy in communities for which literary sources are scant or absent. They document the bustling trade in saltfish, enslaved persons and textiles, and the web of relations between Greek and non-Greek individuals in north Pontic cities, from marriage to commercial ties with indigenous groups of the Pontic interior. This article demonstrates how trade could drive literacy in non-elite communities of the northern Black Sea. Literacy and mercantile activity were very much entwined, and developed in parallel with one another and with other civic and social institutions within these port communities.
Co-authored with Jaime Curbera, Inscriptiones Graecae
This article publishes 25 lead tablets recovered during systematic excavations of the Athenian Agora, 24 of which were inscribed with curses. All objects date from the 4th century b.c. and emerged in three discrete contexts: beneath the Tholos, in the southern Industrial District, and in the well beside the so-called Crossroads Enclosure. These tablets expand and complicate our understanding of Athenian curse-writing rituals during the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic periods, while shedding new light on onomastics, prosopography, ritual space, and social history in 4th-century Athens.
New Approaches to the Materiality of Text in the Ancient Mediterranean
From Monuments and Buildings to Small Portable Objects
Full text (and book) available here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvndv50x
Museum Publications by Jessica Lamont
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/africa-byzantium/visiting-guide
Phintias: http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/attic-red-figure-vases-in-the-johns-hopkins-archaeological-museum/attic-red-figure-kylix-signed-by-phintias-as-painter-jhuam-b4-510-bce/
Douris: http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/attic-red-figure-vases-in-the-johns-hopkins-archaeological-museum/attic-red-figure-kylix-attributed-to-douris-jhuam-b9-480-470-bce/
Makron: http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/attic-red-figure-vases-in-the-johns-hopkins-archaeological-museum/attic-red-figure-kylix-attributed-to-makron-jhuam-b10-490-480-bce/
Epiktetos: http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/attic-red-figure-vases-in-the-johns-hopkins-archaeological-museum/attic-red-figure-kylix-signed-by-epiktetos-as-painter-jhuam-b3-515-510-bce/
From binding spells and incantations to curse-writing rituals, magic pervaded the ancient Greek world. In Blood and Ashes provides the first historical study of the development and dissemination of ritualized curse practice from 750-250 BCE, documenting the cultural pressures that drove the use of curse tablets, charms, spells, and other private rites. This book expands our understanding of daily life in ancient communities, showing how individuals were making sense of the world and coping with conflict, vulnerability, competition, anxiety, desire, and loss, all while conjuring the gods and powers of the Underworld.
Bringing together epigraphic, literary, archaeological, and material evidence, Jessica L. Lamont reads between traditional histories of Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic Greece, drawing out new voices and new narratives to consider: here are the cooks, tavern keepers, garland weavers, helmsmen, barbers, and other persons who often slip through the cracks of ancient history. The texts and objects presented here offer glimpses of public and private lives across many centuries, illuminating the interplay of ritual and conflict-management strategies among citizens and slaves, men and women, pagans and Christians. Filled with new material and insights, Lamont's volume offers a groundbreaking perspective on ancient Greek social history and religion, highlighting the role of ritual in negotiating life's uncertainties.
The northern coast of the Black Sea has produced an abundance of documentary texts dating from the sixth through fourth centuries BC. Of great value to the epigraphist and historian are dozens of Greek letters, receipts and curses inscribed on lead and ceramic media. When placed in dialogue with one another, these texts yield new insights into daily life and literacy in communities for which literary sources are scant or absent. They document the bustling trade in saltfish, enslaved persons and textiles, and the web of relations between Greek and non-Greek individuals in north Pontic cities, from marriage to commercial ties with indigenous groups of the Pontic interior. This article demonstrates how trade could drive literacy in non-elite communities of the northern Black Sea. Literacy and mercantile activity were very much entwined, and developed in parallel with one another and with other civic and social institutions within these port communities.
Co-authored with Jaime Curbera, Inscriptiones Graecae
This article publishes 25 lead tablets recovered during systematic excavations of the Athenian Agora, 24 of which were inscribed with curses. All objects date from the 4th century b.c. and emerged in three discrete contexts: beneath the Tholos, in the southern Industrial District, and in the well beside the so-called Crossroads Enclosure. These tablets expand and complicate our understanding of Athenian curse-writing rituals during the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic periods, while shedding new light on onomastics, prosopography, ritual space, and social history in 4th-century Athens.
New Approaches to the Materiality of Text in the Ancient Mediterranean
From Monuments and Buildings to Small Portable Objects
Full text (and book) available here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvndv50x
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/africa-byzantium/visiting-guide
Phintias: http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/attic-red-figure-vases-in-the-johns-hopkins-archaeological-museum/attic-red-figure-kylix-signed-by-phintias-as-painter-jhuam-b4-510-bce/
Douris: http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/attic-red-figure-vases-in-the-johns-hopkins-archaeological-museum/attic-red-figure-kylix-attributed-to-douris-jhuam-b9-480-470-bce/
Makron: http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/attic-red-figure-vases-in-the-johns-hopkins-archaeological-museum/attic-red-figure-kylix-attributed-to-makron-jhuam-b10-490-480-bce/
Epiktetos: http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/attic-red-figure-vases-in-the-johns-hopkins-archaeological-museum/attic-red-figure-kylix-signed-by-epiktetos-as-painter-jhuam-b3-515-510-bce/