The wooden tablet, a notice of debt owed dated January 8, 57 – less than 14 years after the Roman invasion of 43 – was found deep beneath what is now the City of London financial hub.
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Museum of London Archaeology experts say they found more than 400 wooden tablets during excavations in London’s financial district for the new headquarters of information company Bloomberg.
Another is dated January 8, AD 57 and is considered Britain’s earliest dated hand-written document.
Archaeologist Sophie Jackson called the find “hugely significant”, The Associated Press writes.
“It’s been a process that’s really enabled us to hear the voices of the very first Londoners”, said Jemma Read, head of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which supported the work.
While wood rarely survives when buried in the ground, the tablets were preserved by the absence of oxygen in the wet mud of the Walbrook, which dominated the area in Roman times but is now one of London’s many buried rivers.
All the tablets were originally coated in black beeswax, on which messages were written. Writing was carved into the wax, and sometimes the scratches were deep enough to score the wood beneath.
The Romans founded London after their invasion of Britain in A.D. 43.
Some 410 wooden tablets have been discovered, 87 of which have been deciphered to reveal names, events, business and legal dealings and evidence of someone practising writing the alphabet and numerals. In addition to the judge and Tertius the brewer, there’s a cooper and numerous slaves, soldiers and freedmen. The haul also includes reference to the historical figure Julius Classicus, evidence of a quick recovery after the city’s destruction by Boudica, and a practice alphabet – as though from a school.
Only 19 such tablets had previously been discovered in London, so this is a rich cache for those studying the period.
Classicist Roger Tomlin, who deciphered the inscriptions, said looking at the ancient handwriting had been “fun”.
Experts said the tablets, many of which are broken fragments, ended up in layers of soil used as landfill to manage the Walbrook, along with coins, pottery and wood which can be used to date them, while some have the dates written on them.
They also show early London was inhabited by businessmen and soldiers, many from Gaul and the Rhineland. I, Tibullus the freedman of Venustus, have written and say that I owe Gratus the freedman of Spurius 105 denarii from the price of the merchandise which has been sold and delivered.
Numerous tablets speak to a period shortly afterthe Boudican Revolt in AD 62, an uprising against Roman rule in which up to 70,000 people are thought to have been killed.
Once excavated, the tablets were kept in water, then cleaned and freeze-dried.
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More than 700 artefacts from the excavation will go on display next year in an exhibition space in the new Bloomberg building, including the earliest dated writing tablet.
