"Inflame Her Heart": An Erotic Curse between Women in Third Cent. C.E. Hermopolis Magna (20 min)

Presenters

Sophia K. Taborski, Cornell University

Abstract

Fewer than ten erotic curse tablets between people of the same sex survive from antiquity, providing a unique window into queer relationships and desires. The longest of these is a 62-line curse commissioned by Sophia to Gorgonia from third century C.E. Hermopolis Magna, purchased by the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in 1911 (inv. no. 14487, Supplementum Magicum (SM) I.42). It includes lines in meter, names of obscure deities, and voces magicae, suggesting it was copied from a formulary by a scribe. The curse seeks to inflame Gorgonia’s body parts and render her a slave (doule) to Sophia in a bathhouse. Bernadette Booten argues that Sophia adopted the aggressive role not to replicate a heterosexual relationships, but to make a more complicated statement, like butch-femme lesbian couples in twentieth century America. Since this discussion, Lindsay Watson, Britta Ager, and Elizabeth Ann Pollard, among others, have convincingly argued that erotic curses are better understood as violent threats rather than strategies for marriage or expressions of unrequited love. How do we interpret Sophia’s curse against Gorgonia: As a violent threat, play with gender roles, or something else entirely? How much agency did Sophia have in commissioning the curse tablet? Previous discussions of this curse have focused exclusively on its text. After examining the tablet and taking raking light photos of it with a macro lens, I will determine whether it was written entirely by a single commissioned scribe or whether the names were added by someone else. I can also determine where writers hesitated or emphasized words. Close analysis of the orthography, materiality, and text of SM I.42 allows us to better understand one example of sapphic desire in Roman Egypt.