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Binding & Release

Breaking the Red Pot: Egyptian Execration

Also called Execration texts, Sebeb desheru, Breaking the red vessels

Middle Kingdom Egyptians wrote the names of enemies and dangerous forces on red pots and clay figures, then smashed and buried them to bind those forces. The modern adaptation breaks a pot inscribed with a fear or a bad pattern, not a person.

TraditionAncient Egyptian state and temple ritual (history); modern adaptation
RegionEgypt and Nubia
Erac. 2000 to 1650 BC
Moon☾ Waning moon
DaySaturday · Saturn
ElementEarth
Difficulty●●○ Moderate
Time30 minutes

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The working

  1. Write on the outside of the pot the fears, patterns or habits you want to bind, as a list, in the way the Egyptians listed hostile names. Do not write a person's name.
  2. Add a closing line in your own words, for example: every force that rises against my peace is bound and broken.
  3. Put on safety glasses, wrap the pot in the towel or slide it into the bag, and set it on hard ground.
  4. Strike it once or twice with the hammer so it breaks inside the cloth.
  5. Carry the pieces in the cloth to a garden bed or a deep pot of soil and bury them.
  6. Wash your hands and leave the place without looking back.

Take care: Wear safety glasses and keep the pot wrapped when striking it; sherds are sharp. Bury pieces where no one walks barefoot. Never inscribe a real person's name.

Versions across time and place

i

The Berlin bowls

Egyptian Middle Kingdom · Late 11th to 12th Dynasty

Sherds bought for the Berlin museum were reassembled into about a hundred bowls inscribed in hieratic with the names of foreign rulers and peoples, Egyptian rebels and hostile forces. Kurt Sethe recognized them in 1926 as ritual curses meant to be broken. They include some of the earliest written place names of Canaan, possibly Jerusalem.

Uses: Red pottery bowls, Ink

Recorded in: Kurt Sethe, Die Ächtung feindlicher Fürsten, Völker und Dinge auf altägyptischen Tongefäßscherben des Mittleren Reiches (1926)
ii

Saqqara prisoner figurines

Egyptian Middle Kingdom · Late Middle Kingdom

Instead of bowls, these texts were written on unfired clay figures of kneeling, bound prisoners, some excavated near the pyramid of Teti at Saqqara. Georges Posener published the group in 1940. Shaping the enemy as a captive added the image to the written name.

Recorded in: Georges Posener, Princes et pays d'Asie et de Nubie (1940)
iii

The Mirgissa deposit

Egyptian fortress in Nubia · Mid 12th Dynasty

At the fortress of Mirgissa in Nubia, excavators found around 200 broken inscribed red vases, hundreds of uninscribed ones, about 350 mud figures, limestone figures, traces of red-dyed beeswax, and a human burial with the head removed. It is the fullest picture of how an execration rite was carried out and how serious it was.

Recorded in: Execration texts (Wikipedia), summarizing the excavation of André Vila and publication by Yvan Koenig (1990)

History

The Egyptian state saw the world beyond its borders as a threat to maat, the cosmic order the king upheld. In the Middle Kingdom, priests wrote the names of enemy rulers, rebellious peoples and dangerous forces on red pots and clay figures, then broke, burned, speared or buried them. Red was the color of chaos and the god Seth. Kurt Sethe published the first group in 1926, and Georges Posener followed with the Brussels and Saqqara figurines in 1940.

Robert Ritner's The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (1993) showed how each action, breaking, binding, trampling, spitting, matched an Egyptian word for overcoming an enemy. The rites were official and political, carried out for the king rather than private grudges. The modern step list keeps the gesture and the list-making, but names only fears and patterns, as this catalog does for all historical cursing.

Sources

  1. Execration texts · Wikipedia
  2. Spiritual Defense: Execration Rituals in Ancient Egypt · World History Encyclopedia
  3. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice · Robert K. Ritner, 1993

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