The Writing Tablets of Roman Tongeren (Belgium)

Roman wooden writing tablets, known in Latin as tabulae ceratae, have been found by archaeologists in various locations around the Belgian town of Tongeren, the former capital of the civitas/municipium Tungrorum. These rare and delicate finds are remarkable not only due to the excellent state of their preservation, but also because they are inscribed with the remnants of texts, once etched into an overlying wax layer, that can, to the discerning eye, still be deciphered. The tablets not only provide concrete information about religious, judicial and administrative practices, but they also enhance our understanding of the complex processes of Romanisation and Latinisation in the northwestern civitates and municipia of the Roman Empire.

Largely unearthed in the first half of the twentieth century, with a second group discovered in 2013, the Roman tablets housed in the Gallo-Roman Museum of Tongeren and in the city’s municipal heritage depository, became the object of an in-depth study by an international team of specialists piloted by the Gallo-Roman Museum. It is the results of this project that are presented here in this volume for the first time. The painstaking process of deciphering and interpreting the script marks and text fragments is here explored via analysis of palaeography, philology and onomastics, as well as explanations of scientific techniques such as wax analysis and script visualisation by Multi-Light Reflectance Imaging. Rich detail is also provided about other associated wooden finds that shed light on how and where the tablets were produced.

The result is a beautifully illustrated and insightful volume that introduces the lost world of Tongeren and its writing tablets to professionals and the general public alike.