Chamalières tablet

The Chamalières tablet (French: Plomb de Chamalières) is a lead tablet, six by four centimeters, that was discovered in 1971 in Chamalières, France, at the Source des Roches excavation. The tablet is dated somewhere between 50 BC and 50 AD. The text is written in the Gaulish language, with cursive Latin letters. With 396 letters grouped in 47 words, it is the third-longest extant text in Gaulish (the curse tablet from L'Hospitalet-du-Larzac and the Coligny calendar being longer), giving it great importance in the study of this language.

The magical subject matter of the text suggests it should be considered a defixiones (curse) tablet. However, given that it was found at a spa, and that it was accompanied by carvings of bodies and body parts, Meid considers the text to be a prayer by old men for healing their various ailments.

It seems to begin:

"I beseach (uediIumi) before the power (ri sunartiu) of the infernal gods (andedion...diIiuion) [the Celtic deity] Maponos (mapon probably with the epithet Arverriiatin perhaps "of the Averni [tribe]").

Then probably:

"Hurry (lopites) and bind (snI-eððdic?) those men [listed] below (sos ... anderon) with magic (brixtia)."

But Colera interprets the sequence ri sun/artiu as an instrumental noun phrase: "by means of a magic script"; and brixtia anderon as "by the magic of the subterraneans." These interpretations would connect anderon with Latin inferus and Sanskrit adhara- “nether”, from Proto-Indo-European *nd^heros. But another hypothesis is that anderon is related to Irish ainder "(young) woman," so "the magic of women," recalling the passage in the Old Irish Lorica asking for protection “against the spells of women, smiths and druids”: fri brichta ban ocus gobann ocus druad.

The following three lines seem to comprise the list of names of those to be cursed (or healed). It concludes with the thrice repeated incantation luge-dessumíis "serving (the god) Lug", which is paralleled in an Old Irish inscription written in Ogam script, LUGU-DECCAS. Mees, however, interprets these as meaning, "I prepare them for being possessed (or committed)."

Pierre-Yves Lambert, in his book La langue gauloise, offers an analysis.

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