Orphic Tablets

''Totenpass'' (plural ''Totenpässe'') is a German term sometimes used for inscribed tablets or metal leaves found in burials primarily of those presumed to be initiates into Orphic, Dionysiac, and some ancient Egyptian and Semitic religions. The term may be understood in English as a "passport 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. The inscription instructs the initiate on how to navigate the afterlife, including directions for avoiding hazards in the landscape of the dead and formulaic responses to the underworld judges.

Examples

The Getty Museum owns an outstanding example of a 4th-century BC Orphic prayer sheet from Thessaly, 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, "thin metal sheets", singular ''lamella''). Although the term "leaf" 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; 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'', or "Charon's obol", the coin that pays the ferryman of the dead for passage; this particular coin depicted the head of a Gorgon. Also placed in the tomb was a terracotta figurine of a maenad, one of the ecstatic women in the retinue of Dionysus.

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

Interpretation

Günther Zuntz made the most complete survey of gold tablets discovered up to 1971 (at Thurii, Crete, 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 Orphic. Philologist Richard Janko proposed that GroupB from Zuntz's collection derived from a single archetype, for which he offered a hypothetical Greek text and the following English translation while attempting, he emphasized, not to rely on preconceptions about underlying theology:On the problematic relation between grave goods and eschatology, see

The most widely available source that discusses the Orphic gold tablets is the classic (if largely superseded) ''Orpheus and Greek Religion'' by W. K. C. Guthrie. In the first decade of the 2000s, some scholars questioned the usefulness of the term "Orphic" as well as the unity of religious belief underlying the gold tablets; others defended the association of the tablets with Orphism.

''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 steles in the area: , (here the name of the deceased is inserted), ("Take courage, ame no one is immortal"). In one instance, the inscribed tablet was shaped like a funerary headband, with holes to bind it around the forehead.

References

Further reading

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* (A collection of examples providing the Greek texts with German translation, also line drawings of Egyptian examples.)
* {{cite book , author= Günther Zuntz , title=Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia , publisher=Clarendon , location=Oxford , year=1971

Death customs
Ancient Greek religion
Ancient Roman religion