Orphic Gold Tablet (Hipponion-Museo Archeologico Statale Capialbi, Vibo Valentia)

''Totenpass'' (plural ''Totenpässe'') is a

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

term sometimes used for

inscribed {{unreferenced, date=August 2012 An inscribed triangle of a circle In geometry, an inscribed planar shape or solid is one that is enclosed by and "fits snugly" inside another geometric shape or solid. To say that "figure F is inscribed in figu ...

tablets or metal leaves found in burials primarily of those presumed to be initiates into

Orphic Orphism (more rarely Orphicism; grc, Ὀρφικά, Orphiká) is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orphe ...

, Dionysiac, and some ancient Egyptian and Semitic religions. The term may be understood in English as a "

passport A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...

for the dead". The so-called Orphic gold tablets are perhaps the best-known example. ''Totenpässe'' are placed on or near the body as a phylactery, or rolled and inserted into a capsule often worn around the neck as an

amulet An amulet, also known as a good luck charm or phylactery, is an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word amuletum, which Pliny's ''Natural History'' describes as "an object that protect ...

. The inscription instructs the initiate on how to navigate the

afterlife The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving es ...

, including directions for avoiding hazards in the landscape of the dead and formulaic responses to the

underworld The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underwo ...

judges.

Examples

The Getty Museum owns an outstanding example of a 4th-century BC Orphic prayer sheet from

Thessaly Thessaly ( el, Θεσσαλία, translit=Thessalía, ; ancient Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic and modern administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thes ...

, a gold-leaf rectangle measuring about . The burial site of a woman also in Thessaly and dating to the late 4thcentury BC yielded a pair of ''Totenpässe'' in the form of ''lamellae'' (

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

, "thin metal sheets", singular ''lamella''). Although the term "

leaf A leaf ( : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, ...

" to describe metal foil is a modern metaphorical usage, these ''lamellae'' were in this case cut in the shape of cordate leaves probably meant to represent

ivy ''Hedera'', commonly called ivy (plural ivies), is a genus of 12–15 species of evergreen climbing or ground-creeping woody plants in the family Araliaceae, native to western, central and southern Europe, Macaronesia, northwestern Africa and ...

; most ''Totenpässe'' of this type are rectangular. The Greek lettering is not inscribed in regular lines as it is on the rectangular tablets, but rambles to fit the shape. The leaves are paper-thin and small, one measuring and the other . They had been arranged symmetrically on the woman's chest, with her lips sealed by a gold ''

danake The danake or (Greek: ) was a small silver coin of the Persian Empire (Old Persian ), equivalent to the Greek obol and circulated among the eastern Greeks. Later it was used by the Greeks in other metals. The 2nd-century AD grammarian Julius P ...

'', or " Charon's obol", the coin that pays the ferryman of the dead for passage; this particular coin depicted the head of a

Gorgon A Gorgon ( /ˈɡɔːrɡən/; plural: Gorgons, Ancient Greek: Γοργών/Γοργώ ''Gorgṓn/Gorgṓ'') is a creature in Greek mythology. Gorgons occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature. While descriptions of Gorgons vary, the te ...

. Also placed in the tomb was a terracotta figurine of a

maenad In Greek mythology, maenads (; grc, μαινάδες ) were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Maenads were known as Bassarids ...

, one of the ecstatic women in the retinue of

Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; grc, wikt:Διόνυσος, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstas ...

. Although the meandering and fragile text poses difficulties, the inscriptions appear to speak of the unity of life and death and of rebirth, possibly in divine form. The deceased is supposed to stand before

Persephone In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Persephone ( ; gr, Περσεφόνη, Persephónē), also called Kore or Cora ( ; gr, Κόρη, Kórē, the maiden), is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the underworld aft ...

, Queen of the Dead, and assert "I have been released by Bacchios himself."

Interpretation

Günther Zuntz Günther Zuntz (28 January 1902 – 3 April 1992), German-English classical philologist, professor of Hellenistic Greek and Bible scholar. He obtained a D.Phil. from the University of Marburg in 1928 and was later a professor at the University of M ...

made the most complete survey of gold tablets discovered up to 1971 (at

Thurii Thurii (; grc-gre, Θούριοι, Thoúrioi), called also by some Latin writers Thurium (compare grc-gre, Θούριον in Ptolemy), for a time also Copia and Copiae, was a city of Magna Graecia, situated on the Tarentine gulf, within a s ...

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, ...

, and elsewhere), categorizing them into three groups that have become the typological standard. Zuntz presented transcribed text coupled with a reconstruction, and interpreted their religious foundation as Pythagorean rather than

Philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined ...

Richard Janko proposed that GroupB from Zuntz's collection derived from a single archetype, for which he offered a hypothetical

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

text and the following English translation while attempting, he emphasized, not to rely on preconceptions about underlying

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

: The most widely available source that discusses the Orphic gold tablets is the classic (if superseded in some aspects) ''Orpheus and Greek Religion'' by

W. K. C. Guthrie William Keith Chambers Guthrie (1 August 1906 – 17 May 1981), usually cited as W. K. C. Guthrie, was a Scottish classical scholar, best known for his ''History of Greek Philosophy'', published in six volumes between 1962 and his dea ...

. Since the 1990s, the usefulness of the term "Orphic" has been questioned by scholars, as has the unity of religious belief underlying the gold tablets. More recently the association of the tablets with Orphism has been defended. ''Totenpässe'' have also been found in tombs from Palestine dating from the 2ndcentury BC and later. These tiny gold sheets employ a formulaic consolation that appears regularly on funerary

stele A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek language, Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ...

s in the area: , (here the name of the deceased is inserted), ("Take courage,

ame #REDIRECT AME {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous page ...

no one is immortal"). In one instance, the inscribed tablet was shaped like a funerary headband, with holes to bind it around the forehead.Roy Kotansky, "Incantations and Prayers for Salvation on Inscribed Greek Amulets: The Magic ''Lamellae''," in ''Magika Hiera'' (Oxford University Press, 1991), p.116; David R. Jordan, review of ''Greek Magical Amulets'' by Kotansky (Opladen, 1994), ''Journal of Hellenic Studies'' 116 (1996), pp.233–234.

References

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Examples

Interpretation

References

Further reading