Research: Journals
The Journal
Issue 32.2
Script on Gold Leaf (7)*
Jean Gallagher
(They will ask you by what necessity you have come.)
Take the gold pill to stay awake.
Keep the gold bit in your teeth until
you can tell them about your skidmark life, how
the skidmark washed away.
*Gold tablets found in gravesites in Southern Italy and Greece, the oldest dating to around 400 BCE. The tablets were often placed on the forehead or chest or in the mouth of the dead and contain directions for negotiating the passage into the underworld, including instructions for speaking with the chthonic guardians and deities. Excerpts from the tablets are adapted from translations found in Ritual Texts for the Afterlife, by Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston (New York: Routledge, 2007).
