Curses!

Several times in my reading about libraries, I have come across the curses that were once written in library books threatening harm to would-be thieves and vandals. A new librarian might benefit from knowing some library-related curses, so I'm going to start collecting them.

Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson (New Haven : Yale University Press, c2001) has several examples (pages 12 through 14) from the ancient world when literature was written on stone tablets.

This one is the most graphic. The tablet carrying this threat was probably housed in a school library in Ashur.

He who breaks this tablet or puts it in water or rubs it until you cannot recognize it [and] cannot make it understood, may Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Adad and Ishtar, Bel, Nergal, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Bit Kidmurri, the gods of heaven and earth and the gods of Assyria, may all these curse him with a curse which cannot be relieved, terrible and merciless, as long as he lives, may they let his name, his seed, be carried off from the land, may they put his flesh in a dog's mouth!

Given that I just copied these passages from an overdue library book, I ask mercy from the gods and will now return it.     #

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