The vindolanda ink writing-tablets

European Museums, The British Museum

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Roman Britain

THE VINDOLANDA INK WRITING-TABLETS

Apart from their fascinating content the Vindolanda tablets are important for two other reasons. First, there is a great variety of individual handwriting, numbering several hundred different hands, which greatly adds to our knowledge of the development of Roman cursive writing in the period around AD 100.

Second, the majority of the tablets are not of the wax type made to be incised with a metal stylus, which were previously thought to be the commonest medium for writing in the Roman world, apart from papyrus. The Vindolanda leaf tablets are wafer thin slices of wood (mainly birch and alder), the writing done with carbon ink and quill-type pens. Most of the larger tablets are roughly the size of a postcard, while the smallest ones are about half that size. The letters were generally written with the broad dimension of the leaf running horizontally and the text set out in two columns, the first at the left, the second at the right. After completing the letter the writer scored it vertically down the center, folded it, and wrote the address on the back of the right hand half. Some tablets had notches cut into the edge so that they could be tied together.

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The vindolanda ink writing-tablets

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Source:  London, United Kingdom