The Pydna curse tablets are a collection of six texts or catalogues written in Ancient Greek that were found at the ruins of Pydna, a prominent city of ancient Macedon, between 1994 and 1997. They were discovered during the archaeological excavations of the Makrygialos cemetery and were first published by Curbera and Jordan in 2003. Each tablet contains a curse or magic spell (Ancient Greek: κατάδεσμος, katadesmos), probably all of judicial nature, and has been dated to the 4th century BC. Three of them are merely name catalogues, while the others also contain language which indicates they were meant to influence legal proceedings. The tablets document in total 66 individuals, most of whom bear well-known Greek names. The onomasticon of the tablets can be overall characterized as typically ancient Macedonian (e.g. Amyntas, Philippos, Pausanias etc.). The tablets have had important contribution to modern understanding of ancient Macedonian anthroponymy and prosopography, particularly in the city of Pydna.
- ⭐ Core Definition: Pydna curse tablets
- Pydna curse tablets in the context of Ancient Macedonian language
Pydna curse tablets in the context of Ancient Macedonian language
Ancient Macedonian was the language or dialect spoken by the ancient Macedonians during the 1st millennium BC. It was either an ancient Greek dialect—part of Northwest Greek or Aeolic Greek—or a distinct Indo-European language, related to Greek and part of the Hellenic branch. Spoken originally in the kingdom of Macedon, it gradually fell out of use during the 4th century BC, marginalized by the use of Attic Greek by the Macedonian aristocracy, the Ancient Greek dialect that became the basis of Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenistic period. It became extinct during either the Hellenistic or Roman imperial period, and was entirely replaced by Koine Greek.
While the bulk of surviving public and private inscriptions found in ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek (and later in Koine Greek), fragmentary documentation of a vernacular local Macedonian variety comes from onomastic evidence, ancient glossaries, and recent epigraphic discoveries in the Greek region of Macedonia, such as the curse tablets from Pella and Pydna.
View the full Wikipedia page for Ancient Macedonian language