Le Muséon 134 (1-2), 13-34. doi: 10.2143/MUS.134.1.3289396 - Tous droits réservés.
© Le Muséon, 2021.
A BILINGUAL GRAECO-ARAMAIC SILVER LAMELLA FROM
JERUSALEM
This silver lamella is an amulet or spell against “headache” written
for Isidorus son of Cyrilla, which was acquired in Jerusalem in 1971 by
a German diplomat and entered a private collection in Bonn. In 1977 it
passed by gift to a private collector in London, from whom it was acquired
by AXIA Byzantine and Islamic Art, London, who then exhibited it with
other “Objects of Devotion” (to quote their catalogue title) in the 2016
Frieze Masters art fair, London. Yanni Petsopoulos, the founder of AXIA,
kindly made the amulet available in 2016 to Roger Tomlin in Oxford, who
made a first reading of the Greek text and drew the whole from the origi-
nal with the help of high-resolution photographs. Petsopoulos also con-
sulted Roy Kotansky in Los Angeles, who read the Aramaic text from the
photographs and drawing (Plates 1 and 2). The two authors then collabo-
rated in writing an entry for the AXIA 2016 catalogue, from which this
paper has developed. Kotansky is responsible for the Aramaic text and
commentary, and jointly responsible with Tomlin for the Greek text and
commentary.
The bilingual lamella is a rectangle cut from thin silver sheet, 9.5 by
3.8 cm, complete except for the very top edge, which is slightly ragged
with consequent damage to the first line of text. There is some encrusta-
tion and deposit of corrosion products especially down the left side and the
right, but the semi-cursive lettering, although minute, is neat and regular and
quite well preserved, suggestive of a date around the 3rd/4th century CE.
It comprises fifteen lines of text inscribed in two scripts with a fine but
rounded point. Lines 1-10 are written from left to right in Greek letters end-
ing at 10a, one-third of the width of line 10. The text resumes at the right
margin of line 10 in Aramaic letters written from right to left (10b), which
leave a gap before the end of the Greek text and continue for three more
lines and part of a fourth (11-14b), extending to about one-half of the width
of line 14. To the left of this the Greek text resumes (14a), but is forced
to drop down one line (15b) for completion, being written just below the
Aramaic of 14b. In the gap to the left (15a), a few Aramaic letters have been
added but are mostly illegible.
The words in Aramaic, including the magic names, are separated by
modest gaps, easing the readability of the text. There are also occa-
sional, less noticeable, breaks separating the Greek words. The Aramaic