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muriel_volestrangler

(101,154 posts)
Wed Jun 1, 2016, 07:53 AM Jun 2016

Ancient Roman texts shed light on earliest Londoners

Dozens of the earliest written texts ever found in Britain were revealed to the world in London on Wednesday morning. The material had been kept totally under wraps for the past two years, while one of Britain’s top Latin experts undertook the painstaking work of transcribing and translating them.

The texts – written on Roman wooden writing tablets and found deeply buried in waterlogged ground just 400 metres east of St Paul’s Cathedral – give the first ever relatively detailed series of brief written accounts of what London was like in the first forty years of its existence.

The documents include what is probably the earliest manuscript ever found in Britain – as well as what may well be the earliest surviving example of the name London.
...
Key characters in the texts include Tertius the brewer, Proculus the haulier, Tibullus the freed slave, Optatus the food merchant, Crispus the innkeeper, Classicus the lieftenant colonel, Junius the barrel maker, Rusticus (one of the governor's bodyguards) and, last but not least, Florentinus the slave.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/ancient-roman-texts-first-londoners-uk-most-important-ever-archaeological-discoveries-a7059271.html

The earliest dated record is from 57 AD - which was before Boudica's uprising, and only 14 years after the Roman invasion. Pretty amazing that wood survived 2000 years well enough for the inscriptions to be deciphered.
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Ancient Roman texts shed light on earliest Londoners (Original Post) muriel_volestrangler Jun 2016 OP
Thanks for posting this! Here's a link to the BBC article, which has photos of the tablets LiberalEsto Jun 2016 #1
Transcribing those was painstaking work indeed -- the lines are mostly faint and intermittent. eppur_se_muova Jun 2016 #2
THANKS for this post - Bigmack Jun 2016 #3

eppur_se_muova

(36,227 posts)
2. Transcribing those was painstaking work indeed -- the lines are mostly faint and intermittent.
Wed Jun 1, 2016, 10:13 AM
Jun 2016

Supposedly, these wooden tablets were originally covered in beeswax, which could be easily resurfaced and re-used. Presumably, the impressions survived because someone pressed too hard with a stylus, and never re-used that particular tablet. Basically, we get a snapshot of Roman clipboard notes that survived because they were not properly disposed of -- rather like cuneiform documents that survived only because the clay tablets were hardened in a warehouse fire before they could be soaked and recycled.

Worth noting that only 87 of 400 have been translated, after two years. Gives some idea of the difficulty.

 

Bigmack

(8,020 posts)
3. THANKS for this post -
Fri Jun 3, 2016, 10:08 PM
Jun 2016

REALLY interesting, and don't know if i'd have seen this anywhere else! THANKS Ms Bigmack

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