NARRATOR: Could this strange contraption
really see into your soul?
WEST: The idea that you could just put something
on someone's head and then suck out
all the measures of personality from them --
wouldn't that be fun?
NARRATOR: Why was the wearer of this
weird gold mask treated so bizarrely?
ESCOLANO-POVEDA: He was placed upside down with
his head separated from the body.
NARRATOR: And what is so odd about this ancient Greek jar?
MacDONALD: There's every reason to believe
that this combination of pot
and sacrifice and iron nail are part of an act of
dark magic.
NARRATOR: These are the most remarkable
and mysterious objects on earth.
Hidden away in museums, laboratories, and storage rooms.
Now, new research and technology
can get under their skin
like never before.
We can rebuild them,
pull them apart,
and zoom in to reveal
the unbelievable, the ancient,
and the truly bizarre.
These are the world's strangest things.
In Minnesota's Science Museum
sits one of the strangest devices ever invented.
This is a completely bizarre contraption.
NARRATOR: Now, using cutting-edge technology,
we can bring this unique object to life.
This is the psychograph.
Consisting of nearly 2,000 individual parts,
it looks like some kind of robotic hairdryer.
BALL: There's a dome that comes down from a pole
over the head, and that's attached to a mahogany box,
and then there are electrical connections
going from this device into the box.
NARRATOR: Within the dome are 32 tiny,
twisted steel probes mounted on pivots.
They are designed to press up against the skull.
Its creator claims this allows it to accurately
calculate your psychological strengths and weaknesses.
It's supposedly capable of revealing
not just what kind of person you are,
but the kind of job that you should do.
NARRATOR: When it is unveiled to the public,
it becomes a sensation, with people clamoring
to get their head read, but can it really work?
Where does the idea for it come from?
And how does a scientific device
end up in a shopping mall?
Wisconsin, 1901.
Inventor and self-proclaimed profound thinker,
Henry Charles Lavery,
begins working on plans for a revolutionary machine.
Lavery is essentially an auto mechanic by trade,
but he's got big dreams, and he earned a name
for himself as the Thomas Edison of Superior, Wisconsin.
NARRATOR: Lavery believes this new machine
will change the world, because it will be
capable of reading and judging someone's personality.
BELLINGER: The premise of this contraption was that it could
measure the shape of
an individual's head and spit out a reading
based on measurements that varied one or two ticks above
or below normal and would
thereby reveal this person's nature, their intelligence.
WEST: Fundamentally,
the idea is that certain thoughts, attitudes,
behavior patterns, talents,
they're linked to structures in the brain.
NARRATOR: In 1931, nearly 30 years
after Lavery first came up with the idea,
he reveals the finished machine.
He goes big on the name and calls it the psychograph.
Where did he get the idea for such a bizarre device?
Ancient Greece, over 2,000 years ago.
Philosophers like Pythagoras and Aristotle are
championing the idea that you really can judge a book
by its cover.
It's called physiognomy.
BELLINGER: Physiognomy is the belief that there's
a direct correlation between
one's outward physical appearance and one's inward
intellectual capability and personality.
NARRATOR: Sounds crazy, but it's actually
something everyone does without realizing it.
Human beings like to be able to make judgments
fairly quickly.
And one of the easiest ways to do that is to look at someone
and see how much you like the way they look and then
extrapolate quite a lot about them in other ways.
That's a normal thing for humans to do, even if it isn't
a very accurate thing for humans to do.
NARRATOR: Unsurprisingly, physiognomy's popularity grows
over the centuries,
and it gives rise to some very weird ideas.
BALL: During the 16th century,
an Italian scholar called Giambattista della Porta wrote
a book called Human Physiognomy,
in which he drew comparisons
between human features
and features of various animal species,
and he would suggest that there were similarities,
behavioral similarities, between these two types.
NARRATOR: For example, he suggests that looking like
a sheep means you have a sheep-like personality,
an animal he believes is stupid and wicked.
The psychograph is based on an evolution of this idea first
proposed in the 18th century by German physiologist,
Franz Joseph Gall.
BELLINGER: Gall's ideas emerged
from his own experience as a schoolboy,
in which he observed that his classmates with the most
bulging eyes and prominent foreheads
seemed to have the best memory and recall.
Gall drew the conclusion that there must
be some organ of memory that resided in the skull right
behind the eyes, which would cause it to protrude.
NARRATOR: Gall decides that the brain
is divided into 27 independent regions.
BALL: Gall believed that the brain
was actually a composite organ,
that it was made of many different smaller organs
and that each of these
somehow governed different aspects of our
character and our personality and our behavior.
And the sizes of these different regions would be
indicative of how much a person held onto each of those traits.
NARRATOR: Gall believes that the larger the region,
the more it changes the skull shape,
creating lumps and bumps on the surface
that can be measured,
exactly what the psychograph does with its tiny levers.
By the early 19th century, Gall's idea
has acquired a very scientific name -- phrenology.
Getting your head read with a giant set of calipers
becomes all the rage among the elites of European
high society,
while in America, brothers Lorenzo and Orson Fowler
turn it into a business empire.
The Fowler brothers created the phrenological cabinet,
and they had thousands of skulls of shady characters,
ranging from known criminals to pirates,
and they offered readings to the general public,
who could come in and pay for the privilege of being told
what kind of person they were based on their skull.
NARRATOR: Phrenology attracts
celebrity fans like American poet Walt Whitman,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
and the great inventor, Thomas Edison.
But there is a dark side to the idea
behind the psychograph.
Amongst the skulls in the Fowler Brothers collection was one
that had belonged to
an Apache chief named Mangas Coloradas, who had been first
tortured and then killed by American soldiers.
And they alleged that it showed characteristics
of indigenous Americans
that set them apart from white European settlers.
And so the whole science of phrenology was very much caught
up with this deeply racist undercurrent
of thinking about human races.
NARRATOR: Ignoring these disturbing controversies,
inventor Henry Lavery sees a business opportunity.
He's going to sell phrenology to
companies so they can select perfect employees.
But the old-fashioned manual approach is
a poor fit for his new business model.
BELLINGER: First of all, it was very time consuming
but perhaps more importantly, it's really subjective.
His idea was, let's actually make
a device which can automate this process.
It can do it faster and more accurately
and more consistently.
Hence the psychograph was born.
NARRATOR: Lavery claims his bizarre new contraption can
take an accurate reading in just 90 seconds,
but has he really made a machine that can do that?
NARRATOR: This weird contraption claims
to scientifically measure your personality.
How on Earth can it do that?
A helmet was brought down over the head,
there was a knob on the front to tighten it, and then inside
the helmet, there were 32 probes
that would move to 32 different parts of the cranium and would
make measurements that would allegedly reveal the scores for
these different 32 personality characteristics,
things like sense of humor, covetousness, combativeness.
NARRATOR: As the metal probes pivot to match
the shape of the skull,
they connect to one of five different electrical contacts.
So each of these 32 probes would measure
basically a bump on the skull
and see how big it was and would send that signal to
the recording device.
So for a small bump, you'd get a readout of one.
If it's a bit bigger, it was two, and so on
on this five-point scale.
NARRATOR: When the subject is in place,
the operator flicks a switch,
activating a belt-driven motor that drives the printer in
the wooden box.
The printer receives a signal
from each of these 32 sensors
and stamps out the appropriate number
from 1 to 5, consecutively
for each of these personality traits.
NARRATOR: Five possible readings from each of the 32 probes
gives an almost unlimited number of
possible profiles.
The results appear on a 16-inch-long
ticker tape roll of paper.
BALL: It wasn't just giving you
a kind of objective assessment of your personality.
It was dispensing vocational advice.
So it was telling you what kinds
of jobs you might be suited for.
You know, whether you might be best suited
to being a hotel manager or even a prizefighter.
NARRATOR: It looks deeply impressive.
But what's the real science behind Lavery's strange machine?
Can you really measure someone's personality
from the bumps on their head?
When Gall talks about the brain being divided
into regions, he isn't completely crazy.
BALL: If you think about those porcelain figurines
that were made of the skull,
divided into various areas, labeled with different aspects
of personality,
there's something in that that resonates with
a more modern view of understanding the brain itself,
and this was something that really started to be
appreciated in the mid-19th century,
in particular in the 1860s with the work of
the French physiologist, Paul Broca.
NARRATOR: Broca discovers that all of his stroke patients
that have difficulty speaking
have damage to the left frontal region of the brain.
He concludes correctly that this area
controls our ability to speak.
MAN: The white area
that's shown here in the black area,
it's a different way of seeing it.
That's a devastating stroke.
This part of the brain is now known as Broca's Area,
but this is not the same as Gall's leap to defining all
personality from brain shape.
WEST: It is true that there are different parts of the brain
that correspond to different
parts of our minds, if you want to put it that way,
but it's not in the same neat, packaged way
that Gall was proposing -- that part isn't true.
NARRATOR: Even in Gall's day,
a century before the psychograph sees the light of day,
phrenology is already viewed with enormous suspicion.
BALL: One of the problems that phrenology had is that there
wasn't any consensus about
which parts of the brain dealt with which particular function,
which particular personality trait.
And there wasn't any consensus about what those traits were.
NARRATOR: But there is an even more fundamental problem with
Gall's ideas.
BALL: The real problem with phrenology is that the shape
and thickness of the skull
bears no obvious relation to the brain it's encasing.
It can vary for all sorts of reasons.
WEST: The idea that you could just put something on someone's
head and then suck out all the measures of personality
from them, wouldn't that be fun?
It's a nice idea, even if not a very credible one.
NARRATOR: By the turn of the 20th century,
phrenology has been almost completely debunked by science.
So why does Henry Lavery then spend
30 years building the psychograph?
The fact that science doesn't
support the psychograph is almost irrelevant.
Lavery isn't planning to sell it to scientists.
BELLINGER: We start to see these psychograph machines popping
up everywhere -- in the lobbies of cinemas,
in department stores, in cruise ships,
I mean, even in doctors' offices.
They become a bit of a form of public entertainment with this
kind of false promise of
enlightening people about themselves.
NARRATOR: In 1934, the psychograph is even
exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair.
But it isn't alongside
the other technological innovations of the age.
BELLINGER: It's over with the freak shows in between
the Ripley's Believe It or Not exhibition and the flea circus.
It's been relegated to
the sphere of pseudoscience, to popular entertainment.
NARRATOR: Up to 45 machines are built,
but in 1938, the psychograph bubble finally bursts,
and Lavery is forced to mothball his machines.
The psychograph may have died in obscurity,
but the ghost of phrenology lives on.
Its ideas have permeated into our language to some degree,
they're still there,
so when we talk about, for example, things being
highbrow and lowbrow,
that's a reflection of the old idea that the shape of our brow
was somehow connected to our intellect.
And if you had a low brow,
you were less intelligent than if you had a nice sort of
high forehead.
NARRATOR: So, despite its controversial past,
the idea behind this bizarre machine
is the pseudoscience that refuses to die.
In a display case at a museum in Northern Peru is
a strange mask with a distorted and heavily
decorated human face.
The quality of the craftsmanship is outstanding.
NARRATOR: But brand-new analysis has led experts
into a dark world of macabre ancient rituals.
DODDS PENNOCK: This new research just added
an amazing new dimension to our understanding.
NARRATOR: Now, using cutting edge digital technology,
we can examine this strange relic in microscopic detail.
This is the Sican Mask.
Fashioned from solid gold,
it measures 18 inches by 11 inches,
and at the center of the unusually shaped eyes are
beads made from polished amber and emeralds.
It's decorated with a nose clip
and intricate ornamental earrings.
Just from looking at the craftsmanship, we can tell
it's incredibly valuable.
NARRATOR: It is painted a vivid red,
the color still bright
a thousand years after it was made,
and there is a gruesome reason for that.
Who made it? What was it for?
And what makes the new research so grisly?
NARRATOR: Northwest coast of Peru,
the Pomac Forest, 1991.
A team led by Professor Izumi Shimada
is on an archaeological dig.
This area is one of only four areas in Peru
designated as of special historical interest
and protected for that reason.
NARRATOR: Beneath the tropical dry forest lie 36 manmade mounds
spread across 23 square miles.
It is all that remains of
a lost civilization that flourished along Peru's
north coast.
It disappeared more than 600 years ago.
They are called the Sican.
Shimada's excavation focuses on
a temple mound known as Huaca Loro,
and at the bottom of a 36-foot-deep vertical shaft
they find the motherlode,
an untouched Sican tomb packed with riches.
DODDS PENNOCK: They recover over a ton of grave goods,
about a third of which are made of metal.
NARRATOR: The treasures include crowns,
gold feather head ornaments,
gold earrings, and a gold ceremonial knife.
But they also find the bodies of two women and two children.
They are arranged around a fifth body
in the center of the tomb.
DODDS PENNOCK: He is laying on the remains of a robe
that was covered with hundreds of tiny gold squares.
He has elaborate gold shin ornaments, as well as
a big chest piece made of inches deep of beads.
A reconstruction reveals how the women
and children were positioned around this man.
Each seems to have been placed in very bizarre poses.
But strangest by far is the man at the center.
He was arranged in a seated position.
His body was painted red.
NARRATOR: That's not what is strange.
He was placed upside down
and with his head separated from the body.
The head has been removed and rotated to 180 degrees
so it's upright.
NARRATOR: And covering the decapitated head...
the weird red mask.
DODDS PENNOCK: The mask is made of gold.
It has very delicate, beaded eyes
made from different kinds of stones
so you see the pupil staring out from the mask
at you, but what's most striking is this bright
red paint in which it's been daubed.
It really gives the mask this depth of color,
which has been preserved incredibly
through the centuries.
NARRATOR: And these details hide a gruesome
secret that has only just been discovered.
The mask is 1,000 years old.
It is made from a single gold alloy sheet
just 200ths of an inch thick.
It is a perfect example of the skill of Sican craft.
In shaping the mask,
there's a real kind of balance to be struck between, you know,
keeping it thin enough,
but on the other hand strong enough to maintain the features.
NARRATOR: The iris and pupil are formed
from large pierced amber and emerald beads.
The finishing touch was to add the distinctive red paint.
SELLA: That stunning red color
actually comes from a mineral called cinnabar,
and it's the sulfide of mercury.
NARRATOR: Cinnabar has been highly prized as a precious
resource by many different cultures
around the globe for at least 12,000 years.
It's a fabulous dye and therefore is often used to
evoke importance through ideas about blood and rulership
and fertility in particular -- we know that
the Romans used it in triumphal processions.
NARRATOR: Many statues in antiquity were
originally decorated with bright red colors.
But this mask is different.
There is something very dark beneath its gaudy paint.
SELLA: The whole idea of a paint is that
you're going to apply a color across a surface.
And for that, you're gonna need, first of all, a pigment.
That's the substance which actually
gives rise to the color.
NARRATOR: In the case of the mask,
that is the red mercury salt, cinnabar.
You're then going to need some kind of liquid medium,
which allows it to flow so that
you can spread it around, and finally,
you're gonna need some kind of binder, which will hold it
together once you've applied it to the surface.
NARRATOR: But new research has revealed something
completely unexpected.
In 2021, a study was done to actually analyze
the composition of the red material on the surface.
They used a technique which is called FTIR.
This is an infrared technique, which actually allows
you to detect organic molecules on the surface
and identify them.
And with this, they were able
to conclude that there was protein.
NARRATOR: But it's when scientists carry out
further analysis to identify the proteins
that they discover something truly shocking.
It was both serum albumin and immunoglobulin G,
both of which are proteins present human blood.
That deep red color
comes from blood.
Human blood.
NARRATOR: Who wears a mask painted with
human blood on their decapitated head?
NARRATOR: The red paint on this 1,000-year-old mask
is mixed with human blood.
Who is the decapitated man buried wearing it?
Archaeologists have found many simple shallow graves in
communal Sican cemeteries believed to be
those of commoners.
But the tomb where the mask is found
is on an altogether different scale.
Calculations have shown that it took about two weeks to
20 people to just build the structure of the tomb.
And a lot more work went into
making all the objects that were put inside.
So quite a lot of economic value,
but also the work of many people was
invested into creating the tomb for this person.
NARRATOR: The use of gold in the mask also gives
us clues about the man buried in the tomb.
Access to refined gold, to precious metals seems
to be indicative of the very highest status.
These are the elite lords of the dynasty.
NARRATOR: As a member of this elite group,
the mask's owner would be at the center of Sican
religious practices.
DODDS PENNOCK: He would have worn a fabulous
headdress as well as the mask and gold all over,
and it's quite clear that it's designed to make a noise
when he moves, as well as to shine.
It will make this incredible jingling noise when he moves.
And so this evokes the gods, evokes divinity.
It takes people outside of the mundane and into the divine.
NARRATOR: So is the presence of human blood
on this strange mask part of a religious ritual?
And is the blood willingly given?
Or is it taken by force?
In 2011, archaeologists studying the lost
Sican civilization make a troubling discovery.
Close to where the mask was found,
archaeologists have located over 150 bodies, which were
probably sacrificed in specific rituals around these temples.
The study of the bones has
shown that there's no skeletal trauma,
so they were probably buried alive.
NARRATOR: Bioarchaeological analysis of the female skeletons
from the tomb where the mask is discovered
shows they are healthy before they die.
It suggests they may also have been sacrificed.
So why did these healthy young women have to die?
Next to the body of the man
in the center of the tomb were found the bodies
of two women.
One of them was posed as if she were giving birth.
And the other one was in a midwifery position.
NARRATOR: The positioning of the two women points
to the true purpose of this extraordinary burial.
DODDS PENNOCK: We believe that the Sican lord
is being symbolically reborn into the world,
perhaps reborn as a member of the ancestor cult,
someone who's moving on to the next
phase of life to be worshiped there.
NARRATOR: It explains why the body of the elite man
at the center of the tomb is upside down.
It's how he would be born.
There were also two children buried in the tomb,
and there have been different explanations to their presence
in there -- they could perhaps be offerings.
Perhaps they were meant to be companions for the elite member
of society after he had been reborn.
NARRATOR: Why the head of the elite man
behind the mask is decapitated remains a mystery,
but experts believe the most gruesome ingredient in
the mask's vivid red paint,
human blood, could be meant to aid the rebirth.
DODDS PENNOCK: Blood in Sican culture, it appears,
was tied to fertility and to life.
NARRATOR: So it seems likely the blood is intended
to enhance this strange ritual in some way.
So far, the striking gold mask is the only one found with
human blood,
but it's also the only one analyzed.
The discovery is so new that until other examples
are tested, no one knows if this mask is a one off
or if painting with human blood was common
in this lost culture.
Watch this space.
In a museum in Athens sits a plain-looking ceramic jar,
but this really isn't any old jar.
This jar is one-of-a-kind -- it has curses,
witchcraft, and magic.
NARRATOR: Now, using digital imaging technology,
we can examine the artifact inside and out.
It's become known as the cursed chicken pot.
It's about 4 and 1/2 inches high,
with a spherical base 5 inches in diameter,
and a handle on one side.
MacDONALD: At first glance, this is a rather unspectacular,
unglazed brown pot,
like many thousands of others found
in archaeological sites in ancient Greece.
NARRATOR: But magnify it, and it suddenly stands out,
because it's covered in faint inscriptions
in ancient Greek scratched into the clay.
This was clearly something done for a significant reason.
NARRATOR: And inside the pot, things just get even weirder.
There was actually a head of a chicken.
NARRATOR: What does the writing on the outside mean?
Why is there a decapitated chicken head inside?
Is this pot really cursed?
NARRATOR: This weird clay pot covered with inscriptions
is discovered in the Agora of ancient Athens.
ALTAWEEL: The Agora of Athens is one of the most prominent
marketplaces, industrial places of really the classical world.
Athens, in this period, is one of the greatest cities on Earth,
and the Agora is at the heart of it.
MacDONALD: The Agora was a civic center,
a place of governance, of meeting, of remembrance,
a commercial area,
the center of the ancient city.
NARRATOR: In 2006, a team of archaeologists are digging in
an area of the Agora
once used by the craftspeople of ancient Athens.
ALTAWEEL: They're excavating in the Agora in this building
that's in the heart
of the commercial area, and they come across a fairly
simple-looking jar.
NARRATOR: The jar dates to between 325 and 270 BCE.
And at first glance, it looks
like any old piece of Greek pottery.
In fact, oftentimes, we just pick them up
and sort of throw them in the bucket
without much thought, because these things
are quite common, right?
So we didn't expect this to be that fascinating.
NARRATOR: When the archaeologists look closer,
they realize there's something about this jar that is
very odd indeed.
There's actually lots of writing on it.
There's about at least 30 or so names that are legible.
There's even more names than that.
NARRATOR: Examining the pot further,
the archaeologists spot another strange clue.
The only two words that we can still make out
that aren't individual names are the words "we bind."
NARRATOR: All very weird, but not exactly groundbreaking.
It's when the archaeologists look inside the jar
that things start to turn really bizarre.
ALTAWEEL: There was actually a head of a chicken found,
and some parts of the body scattered into the jar.
NARRATOR: And if that wasn't strange enough,
the chicken isn't even the oddest thing hidden inside.
The jar has a nail that goes through it that is pierced from
the top, and it goes into the base
but doesn't shatter the jar.
NARRATOR: There is no way the nail can
have pierced the delicate clay material by accident.
The brittleness of a material like
terracotta, fired clay, is absolutely notorious.
I don't think you embed a nail
into a piece of terracotta just for fun.
If you want to pierce it in some way, you can't do it
by hitting it.
You've got to be much more subtle and effectively
wear away, drill through, very, very gently,
to ensure that you don't get the beginnings of
that crack, which will give you weakness.
And so this was clearly something done for
a significant reason.
NARRATOR: And it just gets weirder,
because there's something else in there
alongside the chicken remains and the nail.
ALTAWEEL: A small coin was found at the edge of this nail,
not legible, so it's -- it's been erased
so that you can't tell what period
or what king was even referred to,
but it seems to be of a kind of small denomination.
NARRATOR: Why would someone stuff this strange
combination of items into this pot?
If we zoom in on this digital reconstruction,
can closer inspection of the strange markings on
the surface help explain the pot's true purpose?
PLUMMER SIRES: The key to understanding the pot
is in the names that are inscribed.
Although today we can only make out
about 30 individual names,
it is very possible that, when the pot was made,
up to about 55 names were inscribed on the surface.
NARRATOR: But it's not the names that tell us
what this jar is for.
It's the other text experts have spotted,
the words [speaking ancient Greek],
ancient Greek for "we bind."
There's every reason to believe that this combination
of pot and sacrifice
and iron nail are part of an act of
dark magic,
a binding curse known as a katares.
NARRATOR: Could this weird pot really be cursed?
Did the ancient Greeks even believe in magic?
NARRATOR: It seems this ancient Greek pot containing parts of
a dismembered chicken, a nail, and a coin, is cursed.
But do the ancient Greeks really believe in dark magic?
ALTAWEEL: We think of ancient Greece as
being a society of logic, of reason,
but actually, magic, superstition, were quite common,
creating spells and potions and even prayers
against your enemies or people
you just want to have bad things happen to.
NARRATOR: Curses are used for a whole host of reasons.
MacDONALD: It was used for business purposes.
It was used to settle lawsuits.
It was used because of hatred, and in some senses,
different sorts of magic were used for love.
NARRATOR: In ancient Greek society, it seems
everyone's in on magic and curses.
MacDONALD: We know that in some cases,
city states actually commissioned certain acts
of magic.
Also, certain laws prohibited acts of magic.
So therefore, this was a system that was broadly believed in.
NARRATOR: These spells often take the form of a curse tablet.
PLUMMER SIRES: Normally, they would have been written
on a lead sheet, inscribed,
folded, and pierced with an iron nail.
The curse tablets would have then either been buried with
a deceased, because they believed
the dead person could carry the message quicker
to the gods, or they would have been
placed somewhere where
the target of the curse would have frequented.
NARRATOR: Maybe the chicken pot is some kind of a curse tablet.
It has names,
so it indicates individuals which you want to
curse, potentially.
We bind indicates that this object
is somehow pointed towards these individuals,
that the power of the curse is bounded to these individuals,
which is typical of curse tablets.
NARRATOR: The coin found inside the jar also supports this being
a curse.
The coin could be paying
the gods, effectively, to carry out the curse.
So, in a sense, you have to always do
a little bit of sacrifice to get the curse that you want.
So the coin is part of that sacrifice.
NARRATOR: But ancient Greek curse tablets don't normally
use animals.
So what's its purpose?
The chicken is what holds the entire curse together.
The commissioner or commissioners of the pot would
have tried to imbue the helplessness
and the inability to protect itself that the chicken had
onto the intended targets.
NARRATOR: And the chicken itself is significant, because
chickens originally come to Europe from distant Asia.
MacDONALD: The chicken is still an exotic animal
in ancient Greece, and as an exotic animal,
it was particularly well suited to sacrifice.
It was something out of the ordinary.
NARRATOR: But if this is a cursed pot,
who was it aimed at?
We know that the pot was found below the floor of the Agora in
a workshop, and we also know
that the curse tablets, or curse pot in this case,
they were usually buried where
the intended targets would frequent.
So it would stand to reason that this pot or this curse
has something to do with competition
within the trading guilds.
NARRATOR: What kind of curse is being
put on these craftspeople?
ALTAWEEL: Oftentimes, when you do curses
with many different names,
it's usually a judicial case, because there's lots of
individuals involved.
NARRATOR: There are lots of examples of curse tablets
used to affect the outcome of a lawsuit.
ALTAWEEL: The argument that this is a kind of curse pot,
if you will, against a competitor is supported by
the fact that curse tablets were already used in this area.
So having something like this
as another example is not surprising.
NARRATOR: Studying the names inscribed
on the jar also provides a clue.
PLUMMER SIRES: About a third of the names inscribed
on the pot belonged to women,
which is actually really interesting.
We do know that lawsuits were not uncommon during this time,
and these types of curses would
include not just the opponents in the --
in the court case, but any witnesses or supporters
of the opponents.
This might explain why there were so many women's names.
These could have been the wives, mothers,
daughters of the cursed men.
NARRATOR: But did the curse actually work?
MacDONALD: We'll never know whether or not
the curse of the ancient Agora worked,
and we're not even really sure what it was trying
to affect -- was it trying to end the business,
or was it trying to actually harm the people who might have
worked for a particular business?
But, in a sense, that doesn't matter.
What it tells us is about
the strength of belief in magic in ancient Athens.
NARRATOR: Is this innocuous-looking pot
really a curse carrier designed to inflict magical
harm on the names scored into its surface?
Dark magic is the only theory proposed
so far that holds water.