Some remarks on a magical nail with an apotropaic inscription addressed to Artemis.
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | The most famous Latin magical nail with quite a long inscription carved on all four sides addresses the dogs of Artemis and Solomon. First acquired by Hon. W. Temple, Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the first half of the 19th century (1832–1856), the nail came into the possession of The British Museum in London following Temple’s death. It was first published by Orioli (s.d.) who did not state any information about the archaeological context or the provenance. This was followed by another partial publication with a drawing by W. Henzen in 1846 which generated a vivid scholarly discussion in the following century and a half, see recently Bevilacqua 2001. Both the poorly readable letterforms and the substandard spelling raise several questions about the interpretation. Nevertheless, the systematic evaluation of the writing mistakes affords the opportunity to examine the content from a new point of view. In this contribution we offer a new reading based on high resolution photographs and an autopsy with remarks on the possible interpretation of the inscription. |
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