Indo-European Poetry and Myth

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century Merseburg manuscript is such a releasing spell, apparently for a
warrior in difficulties on the battlefield. It relates that certain women were
sitting about: some were fastening fetters (hapt heptidun), some holding back
the army, while some were pulling at the bonds to loosen them. Then: ‘spring
out of the bonds, escape the fighters!’^52
The idea of stabbing by malediction is no doubt rooted in the practice of
sympathetic magic and the stabbing of images of the victim.^53 It is possible
that the Indo-European root *(s)tig‘pierce’ had an ancient association with
this, though the evidence is from comparatively late sources. In one Greek
magical papyrus (P. Mag. 16. 15 and 64) στξαι is used in a prayer for the
victim’s heart to be pierced. In the Neo-Phrygian tomb inscriptions there
occurs a recurrent formula laying a curse on anyone who harms the tombs:
με δεω κε ζεμελω κε Τιε τιττετικμενο ειτου, ‘among gods and men by
Tis(?) let him be tittetikmenos’, which may mean ‘stabbed to bits’.^54 In Gaulish
the root came to mean generally ‘bewitch’, if it is correctly recognized in the
text of the lead tablet from Larzac, lunget-uton-id ponc ni-tiχsintor sies‘let her
release whomever they (the named sorceresses) have bewitched’, and in the
agent noun an-digs‘unbewitcher’.^55
To ensure that the effect of the curse on the victim is comprehensive the
parts of his or her body are sometimes enumerated.^56 ‘With vajra- hundred-
jointed, sharp, razor-pronged, strike at his shoulders, at his head, chop up his
hair, strip off his skin, cut up his flesh, wrench off his sinews, wring his bones,
strike down his marrow, undo all his limbs and joints’ (AV 12. 5. 66–71). The
great Paris magical papyrus describes a piece of love-magic in which a wax or
clay image of the desired woman is made and various magic words inscribed
on each part of it; then one must take thirteen bronze needles and stick them
into different parts, saying ‘I pierce your brain, N. N. –– I pierce your ears. –– I
pierce your eyes. –– I pierce your mouth. –– I pierce your intestines. –– I pierce
your genitals. –– I pierce your soles –– so that you think of no one except me,
N. N.’ (P. Mag. 4. 296–328). A Latin defixio runs: ‘Infernal Gods, I commend
to you N. N.’s limbs, complexion, figure, head, hair, shadow, brain, brow,
eyelids, mouth, nose, chin, cheeks, lips, word, face, neck, liver, shoulders,
heart, lungs, intestines, belly, arms, fingers, hands, navel, bladder, thighs,
knees, legs, heels, soles, toes’.^57


(^52) de Vries (1956), i. 321 f. This relates to the notion of the ‘war fetter’, to which we shall
return in Chapter 12.
(^53) On this topic cf. A. Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae (Paris 1904), lxxix f.; E. G. Kagarow,
Griechische Fluchtafeln (Eos Suppl. 4, Łwów 1929), 12–16; F. Graf (as n. 51), 138–46.
(^54) M. L. West, Kadmos 42 (2003), 78, 80.
(^55) Meid (1994), 45 f.; Lambert (2003), 169, 172.
(^56) Campanile (1977), 95 f. (^57) A. Audollent (as n. 53), 249 f.



  1. Hymns and Spells 333

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