The Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum in Gilman Hall is offering undergraduates a uniquely scary opportunity this Halloween to view a repurposed Roman artifact which reportedly "haunted" a Hopkins staff member.
The museum has chosen the holiday as the perfect time to unveil its newest exhibit: A genuine Roman tablet, restored by Dr. Sanchita Balachandran, that begs the gods to condemn a slave to a horrible fate.
Dr. Balachandran says that the tablet "haunted" her as she prepared it for display in the museum.
The materials before her were the lead tablet itself, which was unrolled in 1908 by Hopkins alumnus William Sherwood Fox, and the original nail which bound it. The nail has a thick layer of corroded fragments still bunched up near its head, which possess a greater value in that location than they would if removed.
No one knows now where exactly the tablet came from, but elevated levels of strontium indicate it was once buried in the ground.
Imagine the unrolling of the corroded tablet in 1908. Fox removes the nail, unable to separate much of the tablet from it, and tries to unroll the lead tablet. The tablet splinters into an incredible amount of fragmented pieces.
Hoping to preserve the fragments for a day when future scholars might be able to revive the artifact, Fox then rightly stores them in small envelopes and tucks them away. Now imagine one was to find these fragments and take on the huge task of piecing them together (remembering a sizable chunk in the center of the tablet is still attached to the nail and thus unreadable) into a close semblance of the ancient tablet.
This is exactly the undertaking Dr. Balachandran attempted.
To help her, she employed the use of Japanese paper. With a little adhesive, the oriental paper is of the perfect thickness and composition to bind the tablet fragments together.
(Dr. Balachandran will admit, if you ask her, to being very good at solving puzzles . . . with a brief look, perhaps, to indicate this puzzle was much harder than any jigsaw.)
She assembled the fragment pieces on a tablet-sized piece of tissue paper — Japanese paper, once again — painted lead-grey. Upon examination of the tablet, it's hard to see how anyone could decipher words and phrases from the scratches strewn about these grey, corroded fragments.
But, again, Dr. Balachandran has done so. And with assistance from Classics graduate student Elisabeth Schwinge, a captivating translation has been composed.
The translation will be included on the display for students to read in its entirety, but in short it's a curse on a slave, Plotius.
The author begs Persephone to "snatch away" the health of Plotius. Pretty predictable stuff . . . but read on just a little longer, and things start to get more and more disturbing. The Roman wants Persephone to take Plotius's "head ... forehead . . . eyebrows . . . eyelids . . . pupils . . . nostrils . . . lips, ears, nose, tongue, and teeth . . . intestines, stomach, navel . . . shoulder blades . . . his "sacred" organ . . . rump, anus, thighs . . . toenails . . ."
And so the appendages continue. Dr. Balachandran suspects the affliction described in the tablet might be malaria, but the curse itself reads a bit spookier than this diagnosis.
To hear the full account of Plotius's sufferings, you'll simply have to come see the tablet yourself on Monday at the museum.
The unveiling on Halloween day will occur in the Archaeological Museum in Gilman Hall.
The exhibit will include two talks on Monday: the first by Schwinge from 12:15 — 12:30 p.m. to discuss the archaeological context of the tablet; and the second by museum curator/conservator Dr. Balachandran herself from 12:30 — 12:45 p.m. to discuss the tablet's conservation.
Dr. Balachandran encourages students interested in the Archaeological Museum to check out the museum's new website: archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu.
The museum also has a Facebook page ("Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum") which describes the events and exhibits at the museum, and offers glimpses of what's to come.
Fans of the Roman curse tablet condemning Plotius will be delighted to learn that the tablet is the first of five preserved by Fox.
But the other four, unlike the Plotius tablet, are two-sided — a conservator's "curse" in itself, as one can imagine — so be sure to see this most accessible exhibit this Monday at the tablet's Halloween unveiling.
