Talk:Pella curse tablet

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: 1. [Θετί]μας και Διονυσοφώντος το τέλος και τον γάμον καταγράφω και ταν αλλάν πασάν γυ-
	 
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: 2. [ναικ]ών και χηράν και παρθένων, μάλιστα δε Θετίμας, και παρκαττίθεμαι Μάκρωνι και
	 
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: 3. [τοις]δαίμοσι, και οπόκα εγώ ταύτα διελ<ί>ξαιμι και αναγνοίην πάλ<L>ιν ανορ<ύ>ξασα
	 
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: 4. [τόκα]γάμαι Διονυσοφώντα, πρότερον δε μη μη γαρ λάβοι άλλαν γυναίκα αλλ' εμέ,
	 
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: 5. [εμέ δ]έ συνκαταγηράσαι Διονυσοφώντι και μηδεμίαν άλλαν, ικέτις υμώ<ν> γίνο-
	 
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: 6. [μαι, Φίλ]αν οικτίρετε δαίμονες φίλ[ο]ι, ΔΑΓΙΝΑΓΑΡΙΜΕ φίλων πάντων και έρημα, αλλά
	 
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: 7. [....]α φυλάσσετε εμίν ό[π]ως μη γίνεται τα[ύ]τα και κακά κακώς Θετίμα απόληται.
	 
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: 8. [....]ΑΛ[-].ΥΝΜ .. ΕΣΠΛΗΝ εμός, εμέ δε [ε]υ[δ]αίμονα και μακαρίαν γενέσται.
	 
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: 9. [-]ΤΟ[.].[-].[..]..Ε.Ε.Ω[?]Α.[.]Ε..ΜΕΓΕ [-]
	 
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[the diacritics are not present in the original] 
	 
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dab (ᛏ) 28 June 2005 07:29 (UTC)
	 
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why do you transcribe ω as ōo?
:copy-paste error, sorry dab (ᛏ) 09:23, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: He, he, he, I agree: it's also very funny in a way.  Maybe Macro was more powerful than what you and I think!  Anyways, you have made a transcription mistake: you write ΑΛΛ Ε ΕΜΕ instead of ΑΛΛ Η ΕΜΕ.  Would you please correct it?  The Wikipedia numerical code confuses me or I would have done it myself.  Thanx
I'll fix it; but why do we translate katagrapho as "I bind"? The required meaning must be something like "I encumber magically", but isn't the literal meaning just "I inscribe"? LSJ gives a meaning "I curse" , which is obviously intended here, so we should either say "I inscribe" (implying, with the intent to curse), or, less literally, just "I curse" dab (ᛏ) 12:17, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: Good point, both LSJ and you are obviously correct.  I gave thought to it and decided upon "bind" because it connects with the meaning of "katadesmos" (binding down).  Still, any which way you choose to translate it, I have no objection.  It depends whether one wants to offer a word-by-word literal translation or a looser, meaning-based one.  It's the perennial predicament of a translator.  Hence the famous "translator=traitor" motto! Chronographos 11:16, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Found some stuff!  Prof. Radcliffe's translation is somewhat different.  We'll talk about it some more later Chronographos 16:14, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: Yes, and there is actually more text on the picture than the original publication.  Do you think is was better restored later on, after more pieces were found?  I think the 2nd century dating, if true, actually is a stronger argument for a Macedonian dialect as by that time Koine must have been much more prevalent.  I wonder whether they dated it by linguistic or stratigraphic criteria.  Because the latter would be confounded by Phila's actual burying of the tab deeper than where it would be supposed to be!  Notice how Phila says πασάν γυναικών και χηράν: Genitive Plural rendered successively into Doric, Attic and Doric again (admittedly the Doric forms are 1st Declension whereas the Attic one is 3rd Declension, i.e. no thematic vowel).  I have no idea what ΔΑΓΙΝΑΓΑΡΙΜΕ means, not even where the word breaks are.  I am pretty suspicious though that ΑΠΟΛΗΤΑΙ is grossly misspelt.  I have forgotten how the Optative Aorist of απόλλυμι forms.  Wish I knew where my old grammar book is hiding!  Chronographos 22:10, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: transcription

message: LSJ: δαγύς, δαγύδος, ἡ: wax doll, used in magic rites, puppet (Theocritus Idylls 2.110: "ἀλλ' ἐπάγην δαγῦδι καλὸν χρόα πάντοθεν ἴσα"). It does not fit ΔΑΓΙΝΑ morphologically, but the semantic fit just couldn't be better.  Theocritus' passage is under "Φαρμακεύτριαι" (poisoners!).  Chronographos 7 July 2005 01:28 (UTC)
:Thanks Chrono, that's interesting. I'm going to look for the etymology of that Greek word, if it has one. Decius 7 July 2005 08:29 (UTC)
:that's really interesting. So maybe she was not supposed to say her own name, and refers to her role, "have mercy on me, the curser". So could Dagina be an XMK word? Is there a thagus, dachus, tachinos or something similar? Frisk doesn't know, he has "Technisches Fremdwort ohne Etymologie." dab (ᛏ) 09:30, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Looky here, what I found:

message: The term "curse tablet" is found much more often in the scholarly literature than is "katadesmos" (Google Scholar: 
103 vs.
11;
Google .edu: 
67 vs. 
12).  On the Web at large, "Pella katadesmos" is more popular than "Pella curse tablet", but this includes many WP mirrors and plagiarists, and popular literature.  (Interestingly, neither term appears in Scholar or .edu.) What's more, "curse tablet" is plain English, which is preferred by WP policy, and indeed is the only form used in the quotes in the article. I suggest we move the article to "Pella curse tablet".  Comments? --Macrakis 16:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me; how's the web with "-wikipedia"? Septentrionalis 19:04, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Excluding the term 'Wikipedia' only removes the honest mirrors, not the many plagiarists; if you look at the search results, you'll see that there is a huge amount of copying of the same few texts, some from Wikipedia, others from who knows where.  These days, using random text from Wikipedia (often without acknowledgement) is used as a search engine spamming technique....  Scholar, .edu, and Books (9:0) are more reliable that way. --Macrakis 16:22, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I must agree; another problem is that katadesmos shows up outside Rnglish, and "curse tablet" doesn't. When I looked for English pages that exclude one and not the other, and avoided the key phrase "curse or magic spell" there were about a  dozen valid google results each way. Moving. Septentrionalis 19:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Katadesmos" or "curse tablet"

message: It may be argued that, based on the translation, this is both a prayer and a curse.
Note that the woman "prays" that:
# Dionysophon wed the woman praying,
# that may he not wed any woman but the woman and
# that she may grow old with him and
# that [the demons e.g gods etc.] have mercy on her
But that she also prays that Dionysophon wed her instead of Thetima and that Thetima should "perish miserably".
From a formal magickal perspective, this is not purely a curse regardless of the formal first line -- heck it is a typical ignorant prayer. IMO. SunSw0rd 22:20, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Curse or Prayer 

message: On June 21, 2006, Tasoskessaris changed Dionysophon's etymology from "light of" to "voice of Dionysus". This doesn't make sense: Διονυσοφῶν is clearly from *Διονυσοφά(h)ων (via Crasis), and its genitive Διονυσοφῶντος is cleary from *Διονυσοφά(h)οντος, so the most obvious meaning is indeed "light of Dionysus". However, since I haven't found the appropriate references for this etymology, I won't insert it to the article yet. But I did remove the (unreferenced, and morphophonologically unjustifiable) etymology of Διόνυσος + φώνη. --Omnipaedista (talk) 05:37, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology of Dionysofon 

message: This particular reference was deleted as unreliable. Apart of Fut's opinion I would be interested in having a second academic opinion about its notorious unreliability only to be sure that this is not a personal opinion but a well established fact. Nothing more. Thanks. --Factuarius (talk) 02:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: This book is the work of an amateur enthusiast who has been trying to "reconstruct" Indo-European as a modern language, to be used as the common language of Europe. The book is cobbled together from various sources; its chapters on individual ancient languages – including that on Ancient Macedonian – are essentially copied from Wikipedia itself. Fut.Perf. ☼ 09:18, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: And why is notoriously unreliable? --Factuarius (talk) 14:27, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wikipedia articles are notoriously not reliable sources. Would a book that consists of ripped-off Wikipedia articles be a reliable source? Think. Fut.Perf. ☼ 14:41, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I see, OK. --Factuarius (talk) 14:44, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Carlos Quiles: A Grammar Of Modern Indo-European: Language & Culture, Writing System & Phonology, Morphology And Syntax as reference

message: Where the intro talks about "four" Doric texts from Macedonia, I've changed "may" to "might", and removed the explicit reference to the item that somebody here on Wikipedia has chosen to call the Phiale of Megara (not that that's an established term, BTW). I know that one(!) author has tentatively suggested this object might be of local Macedonian provenance, but the mainstream view given everywhere else, including the reference that was actually cited together with the "phiale", assigns it squarely to Megara in southern Greece. This (otherwise not very notable) item was merely found in Macedonia but was almost certainly produced elsewhere. Mentioning it in the lead, and with the implied suggestion that its alleged Macedonian provenance is anywhere near established, means giving undue weight to what is in all likelihood a simple, isolated error on the part of one scholar. (As we discussed over at Phiale of Megara, O'Neil based his claim on the erroneous belief that the text fails to show a certain Megarian local script form, but the depictions we have of the object clearly show that it in fact has that Megarian form – meaning that O'Neil never actually looked at it.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other "Doric" texts 

message: The Pella curse tablet text is only translated into English. Translations in standard Ancient Greek and Modern Greek would be useful in order to show the similarities between those Greek language variants. 2A02:2F07:91EF:FFFF:0:0:4F72:9391 (talk) 21:00, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Translations in standard Ancient Greek and Modern Greek would be useful

message: A comparison with the language variant of the Hesychius' glossary based on the phonetic features of the words would be extremely interesting. In the English wikipedia page of Ancient Macedonian it is said that some Ancient Macedonian words in Hesychius' glossary "reveal, for example, voiced stops where Greek shows voiceless aspirates". It would be interesting to know if the same linguistic phenomenon occurs in Pella curse tablet's words.  2A02:2F07:91EF:FFFF:0:0:4F72:9391 (talk) 21:00, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Comparison with Hesychius' glossary's words

message: There is absolutely no proof that Ancient Macedonian was a different language from Ancient Greek: the fact that sometimes Ancient Macedonian words (from Hesychius' glossary) "reveal voiced stops where Greek shows voiceless aspirates", meaning b,d,g, instead of ph, th, kh is analogous to a similar, yet not identical phenomenon that occurs in German, i.e. within the same language, between dialects of the same language: Low German lopen vs. (High/literary/standard) German laufen, Low German riek, German reich. This Ancient Macedonian shift constitutes by no means a proof that Ancient Macedonian was no Ancient Greek dialect.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Graecophile (talk • contribs) 15:41, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Yawn.  Another Greek nationalist pushing an agenda.  The data are inconclusive either direction.  That's the problem and "Graecophile" (with his obvious agenda) simply doesn't know how to accept the lack of evidence.  --Taivo (talk) 20:56, 26 October 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: No proof whatsoever that Ancient Macedonian was not Greek

message: (Ancient Macedonian) Berenike vs. (Ancient Greek) Perenike vs. (Modern Greek) Fereniki (the modern Greek word has a transcription into English that begins with a "Ph-", just like the ancient one but the pronunciations differ)
According to some "linguists'" and "historians'" "logic" Ancient Greek (other than the Macedonian dialect) is not only a different language from Modern Greek but also totally unrelated because the Ancient Greek word "Perenike" is "very different" from Modern Greek "Fereniki". According to it Modern and Ancient Greek are supposedly as "closely related" as Ancient Greek and Latin, or Modern Greek and Icelandic.
Berenike and Perenike are words of different dialects of the same language (Ancient Greek) just like Low German lopen relates to (High/literary/standard) German laufen (= to run, "to leap"), Low German riek, (High) German reich (=rich).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Graecophile (talk • contribs) 23:46, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Ancient Macedonian as Ancient Greek dialect