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4,000-year-old tablets reveal magic spells, kings feared, and a beer receipt

Date:

May 5, 2026

Source:

University of Copenhagen

Summary:

Long-forgotten ancient tablets have been decoded, uncovering a mix of magic, politics, and daily life from early civilizations. Among the discoveries are rare anti-witchcraft rituals meant to protect kings and a regnal list that could point to the real-life existence of Gilgamesh. Some texts reveal correspondence between rulers, while others show the rise of complex bureaucracies. One tablet even records something as ordinary—and relatable—as a receipt for beer.

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FULL STORY

This is what happens when a 5,000-year-old technology meets the digital age. Researchers from the National Museum of Denmark and the University of Copenhagen have analyzed, identified, and digitized a large collection of cuneiform tablets. Credit: Troels Pank Arbøll

For more than a century, the National Museum has preserved a remarkable collection of clay tablets from some of the earliest civilizations in the Middle East. Many of these artifacts are over 4,000 years old and written in long-lost languages. For decades, they remained largely untouched, but researchers have now deciphered them, uncovering texts that range from magical rituals to royal records and everyday administrative notes.

About 5,200 years ago, people in what is now Iraq and Syria began pressing symbols into clay to record information. This early writing system, known as cuneiform, helped support the rise of complex cities and organized governments by allowing people to track goods, people, and decisions.

Over the past century, the National Museum has assembled a significant collection of these tablets. Until recently, however, they had not been fully studied. Researchers from the museum and the University of Copenhagen have now completed the first comprehensive effort to analyze, identify, and digitize the entire collection as part of the project 'Hidden Treasures: The National Museum's Cuneiform Collection'.

Rare Texts From Ancient Hama

As the team examined the tablets in detail, they found a wide range of content, including letters, accounting records, medical instructions, and magical texts.

A particularly important group comes from the Syrian city of Hama, first explored by a Danish expedition in the 1930s. In 720 BC, Assyrian forces destroyed the city and carried off many of its valuables to their capital, Assur, located in modern-day Iraq. Some tablets were left behind in the ruins and eventually became part of the National Museum's collection.

"The texts in the collection that originate from Hama are almost 3,000 years old and deal with medical treatments and magical incantations. They had been left behind in the remains of what we believe must have been a large temple library. All other texts were gone," explains Assyriologist Troels Pank Arbøll, who has been part of the Hidden Treasures project.

According to Arbøll, these Hama texts are especially rare because very few similar examples have been found from that region and time period. One tablet stood out in particular.

"One of the clay tablets turned out to contain a so-called anti-witchcraft ritual, which was of enormous importance to the royal authority in Assyria because it had the remarkable ability to ward off misfortunes -- such as political instability -- that might befall a king," says Troels Pank Arbøll

This ritual lasted an entire night and involved burning small figures made of wax and clay while an exorcist recited specific incantations. Because such rituals were closely tied to the Assyrian center of power, researchers were surprised to find this text so far from the empire's core regions. Hama lay on the outskirts of these cultural hubs.

Kings, Legends, and Historical Records

Among the discoveries is a copy of a well-known regnal list that records both mythical and historical rulers. This document is significant because it traces kings back to a time before the Noah and the Flood.

The version found in the National Museum appears to have been used for teaching and includes rulers from the late 3rd millennium BC. Other versions of this list also mention the legendary King Gilgamesh, known from the Epic of Gilgamesh.

"That makes this regnal list one of the few relics we have that suggests Gilgamesh may have actually existed. We had no idea we had a copy of that list here in Denmark. It is quite spectacular," says Troels Pank Arbøll.

Letters, Administration, and Everyday Life

Another set of tablets comes from excavations at Tell Shemshara in 1957, located in what is now northern Iraq. These texts include correspondence between a local leader and an Assyrian king from around 1800 BC, along with administrative records.

Such documents highlight how essential writing was for managing early societies. Many tablets contain