An Aramaic Amulet for Winning a Case in a Court of Law

An unusually long text of a Jewish-Aramaic amulet of the sixth or seventh century, inscribed on a sheet of gold, is the topic of this paper. Its language is close to Jewish Palestinian Aramaic and to the late Targums. Its vocabulary consists of a number of rare words and some peculiar spellings. It is copied with some errors (e. g., mistaking the letters dalet and resh) from a book of magic recipes, and includes the title that accompanied the text, »For all authorities,« and some instruction for its use. The goal of the spell is to reach a successful issue in litigation. The text reflects some typical Jewish notions and expressions, but it also refers to Shamash (or Shamish), a solar deity, and employs divine attributes that are rarely if ever employed in Jewish texts. Such oddities may be explained by its provenance in the Balkan area.