Orphicae Lamellae

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Boy with phylactery (mummy portrait, 2nd century)

The so-called Orphicae Lamellae or German orphic gold leaves are thin gold foils that were found in ancient graves. The gold foils are embossed with ancient Greek texts that contain instructions and information for the deceased's walk through the underworld and are intended to ensure benevolent treatment by the gods of the underworld, which is why they have occasionally been referred to as death passes .

The gold leaves were mostly found near the hand or mouth of the dead person, and sometimes they were probably worn around the neck in a phylactery , as can be seen on a mummy portrait from the Fayum . The finds come from southern Italy, northern Greece and Crete, some from Sicily and Rome. Mostly from the 4th century BC The text from Rome dates to the 2nd or 3rd century AD.

The designation of the texts as Orphic was based on an assignment that appeared to be correct on the basis of the first finds. Today the gold leaves are seen as part of the cult of the underworld gods Dionysus and Persephone .

literature

  • Alberto Bernabé , Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal: Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets. Brill, Boston 2008
  • Alberto Bernabé: Some Thoughts about the 'New' Gold Tablet from Pherai. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . Volume 166, 2008, pp. 53-58
  • Domenico Comparetti , Cecil Smith: The Petelia Gold Tablet. In: The Journal of Hellenic Studies . Volume 3, 1882, pp. 111-118
  • Radcliffe Edmonds: Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the 'Orphic' Gold Tablets. Cambridge University Press, New York 2004
  • Fritz Graf , Sarah Iles Johnston: Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets. Routledge, New York 2007
  • Sarah Iles Johnston: Orphicae Lamellae. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 9, Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01479-7 , column 57 f.
  • Miroslav Marcovich : The Gold Leaf from Hipponion. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . Volume 23, 1976, pp. 221-224
  • Reinhold Merkelbach : A new 'orphic' gold leaf. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . Volume 25, 1977, p. 276.
  • Reinhold Merkelbach: Two new Orphic-Dionysian death passes. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . Volume 76, 1989, pp. 15-16. Online version (PDF; 87 kB)
  • Reinhold Merkelbach: The golden death passports: Egyptian, Orphic, Bakchic. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . Volume 128, 1999, pp. 1-13. (with Greek texts and German translation of examples) Online version (PDF; 298 kB)

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