Greece & Rome · 2nd–3rd century AD · Tongeren, Limburg, Belgium
Roman wax tablets from Tongeren, Belgium, reveal contracts and a Caracalla inscription draft
Two researchers read stylus marks left in the wood of 85 tablet fragments, naming a senior magistrate, lictors and Rhine fleet veterans in Belgium's oldest city.
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Tongeren, Belgium Two researchers have read faint Latin writing left in the wooden backing of Roman wax tablets from Tongeren in eastern Belgium. The texts date from the second and third centuries AD. They include contracts, official records and school exercises. There is also a draft of the inscription for a statue of the future emperor Caracalla, dated to AD 207.
The readings are the work of Markus Scholz and Jürgen Blänsdorf. Scholz is a provincial Roman archaeologist and epigraphy specialist at Goethe University Frankfurt. Blänsdorf is professor emeritus at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
Their readings appear, with a commented catalogue, in a volume edited by Else Hartoch, director of the Gallo-Roman Museum in Tongeren. Brepols published it in 2025, and it is also available in open access. Scholz's team deciphered the Frankfurt Silver Inscription. It was published a year earlier as evidence of Christian belief north of the Alps in the 3rd century AD.
Tongeren, the Roman town of Atuatuca Tungrorum, is regarded as Belgium's oldest city. The settlement was probably destroyed during the Hunnic invasions of AD 451. Wooden fragments excavated there in the 1930s were catalogued as parts of planks or boxes. They were then largely forgotten.
In 2020 Hartoch re-examined them and suspected they carried writing. She contacted Scholz. According to Arkeonews, the 85 fragments studied include further tablets found in 2013.
Letters scratched into the wood under the wax
A Roman wax tablet was a wooden board holding a millimetre-thin layer of wax. People wrote on it with a pointed stylus. The wax has disappeared, but where the iron tip went through it, it left grooves in the wood beneath.
When the fragments were excavated, scholars assumed no writing had survived.
The wood, with its natural grain, was completely dried out. Distinguishing between grooves that formed part of a letter and those caused by cracks, damage, or the drying process itself was extremely challenging.
Markus Scholz, Goethe University Frankfurt
Many tablets had also been reused, so traces of two or more texts cross one another. From 2021 the two researchers worked with reflectance transformation imaging using a dome system. This method photographs a surface lit from many angles to show fine relief. The project also drew on wood species identification and analysis of wax residues.
Progress was slow. During the Covid-19 pandemic the two met repeatedly in person, in face masks, to study the originals together. In the end they could confirm legible writing on only about half of the 85 fragments.
Contracts from a well, school work from a drainage fill
The fragments come from two places in the Roman town. One group was recovered from a well near the forum and other public buildings.
The researchers think these tablets were deliberately destroyed and thrown into the well so that nobody could read them again. This was perhaps an ancient form of data protection. Most of them were contracts or official records.
When drafting contracts, scribes deliberately applied strong pressure so that the writing would be deeply impressed into the wood.
Markus Scholz, Goethe University Frankfurt
The second group came from a muddy depression. It was apparently filled with worn-out tablets and other refuse to help drainage. Its texts are more varied.
They include administrative copies and pupils' writing exercises. The exercises were often the last use of tablets that had already been reused. This group also holds the Caracalla draft. It is a rare record of the preparatory work behind an official honorific monument.
Magistrates, lictors and navy veterans
The tablets mention a decemvir, a senior magistrate. On several occasions they also mention lictores, the attendants of leading state or municipal officials. Such offices had been very rarely documented in the northern provinces of the empire.
The best-preserved tablet, catalogue number 1, was written on twice on both sides. Its older text mentions lictors. The later one concerns a legal act, probably the removal of certain seals.
Other texts name former soldiers who settled in Tongeren after their service. Among them are veterans of the Rhine fleet. One fragment, catalogue number 32, refers to honourably discharged navy soldiers (classici).
The personal names on the tablets are of Celtic, Roman and Germanic origin. Several are not known from any other source.
Sources
- Researchers decipher texts on Roman wooden tablets from Tongeren, Belgium, which were thrown into a well so that their information would become illegible forever (La Brújula Verde)
- Roman wax tablets from Belgium reveal hidden texts on law, administration, and daily life in a northern Roman city (Archaeology News)
- Researchers Decode Ancient Roman Wooden Writing Tablets Found in Belgium (Arkeonews)
- When writing fades but meaning endures (Archaeology Wiki)
Paper: Else Hartoch (ed.), The writing tablets of Roman Tongeren (Belgium) and associated wooden finds, Brepols, Turnhout, 2025 (texts and catalogue by Jürgen Blänsdorf and Markus Scholz). DOI: 10.1484/M.STIA-EB.5.144107
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