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Short Stuff: Curse Tablets · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Jerry's here sitting in for Dave and this short stuff.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Getty up, tally ho, let's go. Let's make sure this
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: one doesn't blow. Oh, say thank you, A curse, a
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: curse upon your house, a pox upon you, then jerk.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I would never write a curse tablet for you, my friend. No,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: nor would I. I mean, like I I would even
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: think that would go without saying, because it's just such
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: a jerk move to write a cursed habilely against somebody,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: if you think about it. Yeah, I never had heard
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: of these before. Uh. These are what kind of what
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: it sounds like. It's a tablet? Uh. This is generally
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: ancient rome or grease with a curse inscribed upon it. Uh.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: And you would generally inscribe this curse um after somebody's death, right,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: not neces necessarily, not necessarily though there's one, a famous
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  Speaker 1: one in POMPEII that somebody affixed to a tomb so
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: you could do it after death. And what you were
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: essentially saying, do you want to read that one? Sure
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: you ready? I'm ready? And this comes to our friends
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: from house stuffworks Dot com in Ancient Roman, ancient Greece. Stranger,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: stay a short while if it is not too troublesome,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and learn what to avoid. This man, who I hoped
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: was a friend of mine, brought prosecutors to me, a
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: k A. Persecutors sort of, I think the literal pink
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: you suit him? Okay, prosecutors to me, and oh yeah sure,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: and instigated proceedings. I am grateful to the gods and
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: my innocence, colon. I am free from all trouble. He
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: who deceived us, may he not receive the pennates, which
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: are the household gods, nor the underworld. So what this
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: guy who cursed this this other person's tomb was saying,
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: is this guy's a jerk. I hope that his his
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: soul basically doesn't even make it to the afterlife. That
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: essentially he's just doomed to wander aimlessly for eternity because
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: he sued me once. That's right. And this is a
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: great example of a sort of a standard issue cursed tablet,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: also known at times as a uh here we go
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the fixione. Wow nice, I was gonna say the E
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: on the end and pinch my four finger and thumb together.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: The fixion. Yeah, I think that's that's it. You might
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: be right, but this was a common practice at various
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: times through the ancient times. And uh, they were not
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: necessarily always written on the same thing. Sometimes it was papyrus.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I believe they found lamps and pieces of clay
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and things like that. It kind of depends on how
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: much money you had. Um, but there was a lot
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: of lead because of the silver mining operations, especially near Athens,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and so lead turned out to be a really great
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: sort of permanent thing that you could carve something on
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and apparently looks really cool when carved upon. Yeah, there's
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: somebody interviewed in the House Stuff Works article that said,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: you know when you when you write on it, when
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: you carve it, it has like this kind of like
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: a silvery line that really kind of pops I guess
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: against like the dull the dullness of the oxidized lead.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And then also it's just easy to write and let
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: you can carve in it pretty easily. You don't have
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: to be like a silver smith of any sort to
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: do that. You can just be an average smoke with
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: something sharp. That's right. Uh, there was a historian too.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: They talked to that said that it kind of came
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and went throughout history. But it, interestingly, it was like
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: a real fad and then went a way really quickly.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Each time that happened. It wasn't like a gradual rise
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and fall. They described it as sharp spikes and popularity. Yeah,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: and I saw that it was. Um, it was a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: The time that it popped up was somewhere around like
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: five hundred BC too, maybe three fifty BC is when
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it first starts. And um, if you'll remember Chuck from
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: our bicameralism episode, that's about the time people got their
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: their brain their consciousness in order and started to get
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the superstitious because the gods had abandoned them. Interesting, I
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: think so too. I wonder if this has anything to
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: do with that. Yeah, I mean sure, it might have
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: just been part of that time. You know, why not
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Julian James hypothesis wasn't scientific. I can add to it anyway.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I like, all right, so let's it's very smugged the
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: way he said that, I liked it. Uh, You're that
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: always reminds me and somebody hear the word smug when
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Tom Cruise talked to Matt Lower about being smug. Oh, yeah, no,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: I never saw that. Oh, it's one of the great
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Of course, Matt Lower ended up being a creepy, so
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not defending him, but I think he was talking
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: about scientology and he just kept I don't know, he's
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: talking about glib Sorry, Yeah, that's right, I have seen that. Yeah,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: good clip. All right, let's take a break and ponder
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: tom cruisiness and uh, we'll be back to talk about
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: curse tablets right after this. That's y s game that
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: you should know that we should know that knows. But
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Josh Clark, so one of the things that people seem
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: to do, and this was like when when they were
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: in fashion, when curse tablets were in fashion, um, everybody
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: was into him. But it seems like one of the
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: things that you would do was like curse your rivals. Um,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: sometimes your rival in politics, your rival in business. I
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: think some people cursed the rival chariot teams to their
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: favorite chariot teams, which is really lunkheaded, but it like
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: it just goes to show people have been lungheaded for
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: thousands of years, right, there's always been lucks. Yeah, your neighbors,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: especially if you have some sort of dispute, anyone who
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: takes you to court. Um. And then also people um,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: who are romantic rivals to somebody you like. I saw
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: one that basically said, may I think Helen be bound
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: when she tries to flirt with or have sex with
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: you know, the dude that I like, whatever his name was,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I don't remember, um, And that basically she was saying, like, please,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: God's intervene and keep her from being able to perform
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: in the sack with um, Aristophanes, Let's say, who I'm
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: neverking was a man or Romulus, by the way, smells
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: bad and has a small pep. Yeah. But the whole
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: thing was, um, The whole thing was that you were
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  Speaker 1: basically calling upon the gods. You were invoking the gods
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: to to do something bad to this person that you
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: did not like. Yeah. And uh So, as you would imagine,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: if you had a lot of money, you were probably
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: more educated. You could probably spell and write these things yourself.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: But if you were wealthy, you probably paid someone to
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: do it, maybe beautifully. Um, But like you said, all
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: stripes did it. So if you didn't have a lot
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: of money, that may have been one like on a
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: shard of clay, and you would go to you may
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: not be able to read or write, so you would
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: go to a magician, and these magician how is described
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: in this House of Works article, where like contract attorneys,
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  Speaker 1: and they would kind of give you a template and
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: have blanks, and you know, say, fill in the blanks
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: with like who's your grievance? Uh? What's his name? Uh?
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And what was the grievance? And then they would sort
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: of fill this thing in and Fred Flintstone style. And
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: apparently there were times even where they found some examples
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: of these square that the name or the grievance was
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: so long that they had to kind of squish it
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: in and on these template forms, which is really funny
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that if you think about it. Yeah, and also it
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: sounds like an ancient mad lib, but magic mad lib basically, yeah, exactly.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: So um, these things got so popular and so widespread
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  Speaker 1: that in some of the Cursed tablets they'll find like
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: clauses that say, and if the other person finds out
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: that I've cursed them and they try to reverse curse me,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: then I am rubber in their glue in that case,
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  Speaker 1: and their curse will bounce off of me and stick
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: to them instead, right, And they would say, what is rubber.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, let's let's just step back for a second.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Took or essentially talking about the same thing, a cursed
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: tablet and saying I'm rubber in your glue is basically
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: the same thing. I just think we should point that out. Yeah,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and it's funny. I do need to poke a little
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: fun in this article because I didn't include it for
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: your I should have included so you could have a laugh.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Year deleted it at the end. It was talking about
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: where these things kind of when they fell out of popularity.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: It's like, well, some argue that even though they don't
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: do anymore, our society is still very much like this,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: and just take a look at Twitter, a sort of
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: modern version of a curse stuff. I gotta laugh. Yeah, yeah,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I guess I kind of yeah, yeah, I think they
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: were cursing Twitter. Just then. Another thing too, is there
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: was a person interviewed that said that they were like
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: a magical arms race because there'd be curses counter curses,
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  Speaker 1: amulets like the evil Eye, you know, or the eye
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: of Osiris, maybe the very famous like amulet or symbol
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  Speaker 1: that was worn to ward off curses. Like I think
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  Speaker 1: that was the rubber that you would wear so that
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the curses would bounce off of you like I'm looking
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: at you, buddy, basically, and then that's it is. Tablets
• 10:01
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• 10:10
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