Bix dot Blog

Inscriptions found at ancient Kourion in Cyprus in the 1930s give precise instructions on how cursing was to be done. A tablet hexing a person very much alive had to be put in the tomb of the fresh corpse of a person who died prematurely – having failed to complete the “normal” life cycle, such as a child or an unmarried person; or a person who died by violence, like murder victims or war casualties, Stroszeck says. As their souls were believed to be “unquiet,” they could carry messages between the underworld and the mortal sphere.

—Philippe Bohstrom, in “Dozens of Curse Tablets Found Down a 2,500-year-old Well in Athens”