Oh, what wonderful journeys we took over time! Or is it more the memory that blurs everything so beautifully? No matter, because it’s almost impossible to find out. Especially not because of the 360 unsorted photos that used to be stacked as slides and are now lying around as cloud files somewhere where you usually don’t look at them anymore. Various artefacts, commonly known as souvenirs, are a better example of the journeys we have made. They are often kept in display cases: the wooden spoon made of coconut shell from Sri Lanka, the model rickshaw artfully made from copper wire from China, the tail of a burst grenade from the Swiss mountains (yes, the Swiss army likes to shoot around there for training purposes) or these inconspicuous pottery shards from Jordan.
Wait a moment! Should you have been allowed to take them with you? And what about the grenade? Probably immovable property of the army, if caught, the penalty would not be less than 7,000 francs or two months in prison. Fortunately, the statute of limitations has long since expired!
“I didn’t know about the curse,” the woman wrote and sent the stones back.
In contrast, how harmless do three pumice stones seem, which a woman probably took into the excavation site of Pompeii at the height of her travel happiness. As we know, the late ancient Roman city was buried under a shower of ash from Vesuvius in the year 79, and if there is one thing there is still no shortage of there today, it is pumice stones. Nevertheless, the woman felt guilty. In an anonymous letter she sent the three stones back to the head of the archaeological park, Gabrielzuchtriegel. He immediately published her letter on Within a year she developed a serious illness. “The doctors said it was just bad luck. Please accept my apology! I’m sorry.”
Do the gods have a hand in what is stolen?
(Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP)
The unfortunate woman is not the first to believe in a curse from Pompeii. Stones repeatedly reach the excavation site by post. Something similar happens in Hawaii, where the superstition also persists that pieces of lava that are taken away could trigger a curse that turns one’s future life into a lava-fired hell. Of course, this is nothing compared to the most well-known curse: that of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, to which explorer Howard Carter’s budgie first fell victim (through a snake bite) and subsequently various people involved in the excavations. This despite the fact that they left all of Tutankhamun’s treasure in his homeland of Egypt!
Yes, curses are unpredictable and sometimes unfair, as anyone who has experienced Montezuma’s revenge (also known as diarrhea) knows. And without letting anything go, quite the opposite: Even though you had bought the half-raw beef heart skewers from the sad-looking street vendor in the Peruvian city of Cusco for a decent amount of money, they came after you mercilessly. Whoever wants to understand that.
The ways of the Lord – and also of the curses – are unfathomable. And if faith supposedly moves mountains, what does superstition move? Exactly: stones.