Too funny - I'm reading D. Michael Quinns Magic Mormon thingy and the mail comes and I get my current issue of Bible Archaeology Review. It has an article on a magical skull and inside the front cover it reads: "Like their neighbors, Babylonian Jews of the third-seventh centuries C.E. made extensive use of magic. Incantations were involved to curse enemies, attract suitors and keep demons at bay. Once thought to be at odds with the austere beliefs of the contemporaneous Babylonian Talmud, the tradition of folk magic is now regarded as complementary to the religious mainstream. Magical incantations have been discovered on thousands of clay bowls, pieces of parchment, tin, lead, copper, silver, gold - even on eggs. Now from the Moussaieff collection, comes an even rarer inscription:a magic incantation inscribed on a human skull. What does the inscription say and why was it written on a skull ? a scholar investigates"
They have a web page for the article:
http://www.bib-arch.org/bar/article.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=35&Issue=2&ArticleID=9