Egyptian Curse Tossed Into a Dutch Well

Someone in second-century Holland was angry enough to commission an Egyptian-style curse in ancient Greek, press it into a lead sheet, and drop it in a well. Heidelberg University researchers have revealed what it says.

The artifact comes from Heerlen, in what was then the Roman province of Lower Germania, and it stands out immediately: written not in Latin but in ancient Greek, composed in the Egyptian style. The lead sheet measures 9.3 by 4.8 centimeters and was recovered from a well beneath the town hall square, at the site of the former Roman military settlement of Coriovallum.

Lead was the material of choice for such objects — called defixiones in Latin and katadesmoi in Greek — partly because it was thought to carry binding power over its targets. Researchers at Heidelberg's Institute for Papyrology used reflectance transformation imaging to decipher the faded text, a photographic technique that combines images taken under varying lighting conditions to reveal minute surface details.

The tablet contains three magical symbols known as Characteres, likely meant to convey the message to supernatural powers, followed by the names of four people referred to as fellow slaves. Scholars interpret it as either a curse aimed at all four, or one composed on their behalf to target an unidentified third party. The two men carry Latin names and the two women carry Greek names; one researcher suggests a woman may have written the inscription herself, bringing the tradition with her from Roman Egypt.

As Heidelberg Egyptologist Prof. Dr. Joachim Quack notes, in the early centuries A.D., Near Eastern, Egyptian, Jewish and sometimes even Christian traditions increasingly merged and spread across the Roman Empire. The Heerlen tablet is a small, dense piece of evidence for just how far that current traveled.

Someone carried Egyptian magic to the northern edge of the empire, pressed four names into lead, and asked the gods to handle it. The gods' response is, at this point, unverifiable.

Read the full story at Heidelberg University, June 17, 2026

Hot Take: Globalization did not start with shipping containers. It started when belief, anger and superstition learned how to travel.