Recent advances in the study of Roman inscriptions have highlighted the enduring value of meticulous epigraphic scholarship.
Following the internationally acclaimed decipherment of the so-called Frankfurt Silver Inscription, Markus Scholz, Professor of Provincial Roman Archaeology and Epigraphy at Goethe University Frankfurt, has contributed to another significant breakthrough.
Together with Jürgen Blänsdorf, emeritus professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Scholz identified previously overlooked inscriptions on the wooden remains of Roman wax tablets excavated in Tongeren, Belgium.
Tongeren, regarded as Belgium’s oldest city, originated as the Roman settlement of Atuatuca Tungrorum and is known for its rich archaeological record.
Several small wood fragments discovered in the 1930s were initially presumed to be from boards or containers. Only later were those noted as the wooden frames of Roman wax tablets – writing implements made from a thin layer of wax inscribed with a stylus.
Though the wax itself was long gone, impressions left by the stylus would occasionally penetrate the wood. These subtle traces were assumed illegible and largely forgotten until their rediscovery in 2020 by Else Hartoch of the Gallo-Roman Museum Tongeren.
The decipherment process proved exceptionally challenging. As Scholz notes, the dried wood grain, surface damage, and multiple phases of reuse created complex palimpsests that were more difficult to interpret than metal inscriptions.
Even with advanced techniques such as Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), progress was slow and required repeated in-person examination of the original artefacts.
The examination consisted of 85 of these tablet fragments from two archaeological contexts – a well within the vicinity of the forum and an existing mud pit.
These fragments were found to contain texts comprising legal contracts, official documents, writing exercises, and a draft inscription dated to AD 207 that mentions the future emperor Caracalla.
Notably, the tablets attest to the presence of administrative offices such as decemviri and lictors, rarely documented in the northern Roman provinces, and reveal a culturally diverse population comprising individuals of Roman, Celtic, and Germanic origin, including discharged soldiers from both land and naval forces.
In a press statement by the JGU: “Even if the remains of the Roman wax tablets are rather unspectacular and the inscriptions themselves less sensational, their decipherment has nevertheless enriched archaeological and ancient historical research enormously – and at the same time written another chapter of successful scientific cooperation within the network of the Rhine-Main Universities (JGU).”
Sources: Rhine-Main Universities
