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Roman wooden writing tablets from Belgium deciphered
Traces of writing on the wooden remains of Roman wax tablets found in Tongeren, Belgium, have been deciphered. They reveal new information about the city on the northern edge of the Roman Empire, including who lived there, the presence of high-ranking officials that have rarely been recorded in northern provinces and some proper names that have never been found before.
The tablets were deciphered by archaeologist and inscription expert Professor Dr. Markus Scholz at Goethe University Frankfurt. He and his team made headlines in December 2024 when they deciphered the 3rd century Frankfurt Silver Inscription, revealing the tightly rolled sheet of silver to be the earliest archaeological evidence of Christianity north of the Alps.
Thought to be the oldest city in Belgium, Tongeren was founded as the military fort of Atuatuca Tungrorum in around 10 B.C. It was located between the Scheldt and the Meuse river basins in what is now eastern Belgium. As often happened with Roman army bases, local civilians (in this case the Tungri people) settled there for the commercial opportunities. After the legions left during the reign of Tiberius (14-37 A.D.), the city continued to grow and prosper.
Atuatuca Tungrorum did suffer at least three major fires, one in the 1st century, one in the 2nd and one in the 3rd, but by the 4th century it was in decline, under pressure by Germanic invaders from across the Rhine. A heavier defensive wall was built at that time, but it was unable to keep out the Huns who destroyed much of the ancient city in 451 A.D.
Wooden fragments that proved to be the remains of writing tablets were first found in the Roman layers by archaeologists in the 1930s. The wood was the base and frame of the tablet. It would be coated with a thin layer of wax that would be written into with a sharp stylus. The wax was long gone when the tablets were found, and in the 30s archaeologists thought no traces of the writing were left behind on the wood.
The wood fragments were put in storage and forgotten until they were rediscovered by Else Hartoch, director of the Gallo-Romains Museum Tongeren, in 2020. Hartoch brought Prof. Scholz in to investigate the possible inscriptions as a pandemic project. It was a major challenge. The wood is grained, dried and cracked, so it’s hard to tell whether a line was written or just part of the wood. Some of the tablets had been reused, the old wax stripped off and new layers applied, so what traces of writing did remain on the wood were palimpsests, layers of writing on top of each other.
After much painstaking work and with the aid of imaging technology, Scholz and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Blänsdorf, emeritus professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, were able to decipher the tablets.
The 85 surviving fragments came from two different archaeological contexts. One assemblage was recovered from a well near the forum and other public buildings, where the tablets appear to have been deliberately destroyed and discarded. Throwing them into the well likely ensured that the information they contained could no longer be read — perhaps an ancient form of data protection. As Scholz and Blänsdorf discovered, many of these texts were contracts or official records. “When drafting contracts, scribes deliberately applied strong pressure so that the writing would be deeply impressed into the wood,” Scholz explains. The second group of fragments came from a muddy depression that was apparently filled with worn-out tablets and other refuse to aid drainage. Here, researchers also identified different types of texts, including administrative copies and pupils’ writing exercises — often the final use of already reused tablets — as well as a draft inscription intended for a statue of the future Emperor Caracalla, dating to 207 CE. […]
Only about half of the 85 fragments preserve identifiable traces of writing. Even so, the deciphered letters, words, and names have yielded significant historical insights. Among them is evidence that high political offices were also held in the Roman provinces. The tablets mention a decemvir, a senior magistrate, as well as lictores, attendants to leading state or municipal officials — roles that had previously been very rarely documented in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire. The texts also shed light on the people who lived in the region. Some individuals appear to have settled in Tongeren after completing their service in the Roman military, including veterans of the Rhine fleet. The names recorded on the tablets point to a remarkably diverse population, encompassing Celtic, Roman, and Germanic origins. Several of these names were previously unknown from other sources.
The full results of the investigation have been published in an illustrated scholarly volume rich in detail about the research and the findings. In deliriously good news for anyone who could use a 424-page rabbit hole to go down right now, the full monograph has also been made available in open access and can be downloaded as a pdf or read online here.
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