...the darkness folding [you] within it.
Final line to the Petelia inscription (gold leaf, c. 300–150BC)
Found in Petelia (modern day Strongoli in southern Italy), this textual amulet is a Classical Greek totenpass or 'passport for the dead' – probably originally deposited with an inhumation, it served as a roadmap to guide the dead spirit through the underworld.
This and similar artefacts are also known as Orphic lamellae or Orphic tablets, because they were traditionally attributed to an Orphic-Bacchic mystery cult.
The inscription was damaged in the Roman period (when it was inserted into a larger gold pendant), but the surviving text reads as follows:
You will find a spring on your left in Hades’ halls, and by it the cypress with its luminous sheen. Do not go near this spring or drink its water.
You will find another, cold water flowing from Memory’s lake; its guardians stand before it.
Say "I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but descended from Heaven; you yourselves know this. I am parched with thirst and dying: quickly, give me the cool water flowing from Memory’s lake."
And they will give you water from the sacred spring, and then you will join the heroes at their rites.
This is [the … of memory]: [on the point of death] … write this … the darkness folding [you] within it.
The fragmentary final paragraph has no parallel in the forty or so similar inscriptions surviving from the Classical period.
quote, adapted text and image all from here – thank you, artifacts-and-arthropods








