The magic of the continental Celts is known to us mostly through the eyes of Greeks and Romans. There are, however, a few precious documents written by the Gauls themselves, in their own language. Among them, the longest and most enigmatic is a lead sheet found in the south of France: the Larzac tablet. It is a text that lets us enter, even if through a door left only ajar, a world of women, names and formulas.
The discovery
In 1983, during the excavation of a necropolis near L'Hospitalet-du-Larzac, in the département of Aveyron, archaeologists found in a cremation grave a lead sheet broken into two pieces. It had been placed in connection with the funerary urn, following a custom well known in the ancient world: graves, places of passage to the afterlife, were considered suitable for receiving texts addressed to the powers below.
The tablet is inscribed in Latin cursive, but the text is in Gaulish. It is usually dated to around the first or second century AD. With its hundreds of letters spread over both faces, it is the most extensive text in the Gaulish language that we know. At least two different hands can be recognised, a sign that the sheet was written or completed at different times.
What it says
Translating the Larzac text remains an open challenge. Gaulish is known only from short inscriptions, glosses and proper names; many words appear here and nowhere else. Scholars nonetheless agree on some points.
A list of women
The text contains a series of female names, each accompanied by the name of the mother: for example Severa Tertionicna, that is «Severa daughter of Tertio». This is a notable feature, because in Roman inscriptions identity usually passes through the father. Naming the mother is instead typical of many magical texts of the ancient world, Greek ones included, where maternal descent was considered a surer way of identifying the person.
The «magic of women»
The phrase bnanom brictom recurs in the text, and most scholars interpret it as «the magic of women» or «the spell of the women». The word brixta or brictom is compared with insular Celtic terms connected with the magical formula. The name of a divine figure or power, Adsagsona, invoked in the text, also appears.
Curse or defence?
There are different hypotheses about the overall meaning:
- a curse against a group of women, perhaps a circle of rival practitioners;
- a counter-spell, meant to undo or neutralise the magic of those women;
- a text produced within the group itself, with a ritual function.
None of these readings is final. What seems clear is that the tablet presupposes the existence of women recognised as bearers of magical knowledge, and the conviction that the word written and laid in a grave could act upon them.
The Chamalières tablet
Another document helps us understand Larzac. In 1971, at the Source des Roches in Chamalières, in the Massif Central, a lead sheet was found bearing a Gaulish text in Latin cursive. The place was a water sanctuary, where a great many wooden votive offerings have been recovered. The text invokes the god Maponos and contains male names, in a context many interpret as a binding formula.
| Tablet | Find site | Context | Main elements |
|---|---|---|---|
| Larzac | necropolis, Aveyron | cremation grave | women's names with matronymics, «magic of women», Adsagsona |
| Chamalières | Source des Roches, Puy-de-Dôme | water sanctuary | invocation of Maponos, male names |
A bridge between two worlds
Lead tablets bearing binding texts, which the Romans called defixiones, were widespread throughout the empire. Larzac and Chamalières show that the Gauls had adopted this practice, its medium and its alphabet, but had filled it with their own language, their own deities and probably categories of their own, such as that of a specifically female magic. This is not mere imitation, then, but a meeting of traditions.
This point also matters for correcting a common image: that of a Celtic magic made only of male druids and rites in the woods. Direct sources instead give us a more varied picture, in which women had a recognised and feared role.
A symbolic reading
The Larzac tablet reminds us of the weight ancient cultures gave to the name. To identify a person precisely, through the maternal line, meant being able to reach them. In symbolic language, the name is the threshold of identity. Those who study these sources seriously learn to regard the power of the word, and the responsibility that comes with it, with respect, rather than to look for a practical use.
In short
- The Larzac tablet, found in 1983 in a grave in Aveyron, is the longest known text in the Gaulish language.
- It contains female names accompanied by the mother's name, a typical feature of ancient magical texts.
- The phrase bnanom brictom is interpreted as «magic of women».
- Its overall meaning, curse or counter-spell, remains debated.
- Together with the Chamalières tablet, it shows the meeting of the Roman practice of defixiones with the Gaulish language.
