Ancient London Documents Unearthed

[vibranium]

 

 

They came, they saw, they got down to business.

 

Archaeologists announced Wednesday they have discovered hundreds of writing tablets from Roman London -- including the oldest handwritten document ever found in Britain -- in a trove that provides insight into the city's earliest history as a busy commercial town.

 

Researchers from Museum of London Archaeology uncovered more than 400 wooden tablets during excavations in London's financial district for the new headquarters of media and data company Bloomberg. So far, 87 have been deciphered, including one addressed "in London, to Mogontius" and dated to A.D. 65-80 -- the earliest written reference to the city, which the Romans called Londinium.

 

Sophie Jackson, an archaeologist working on the site, said the find was "hugely significant."

 

"It's the first generation of Londoners speaking to us," she said.

 

The Romans founded London after their invasion of Britain in A.D. 43. The settlement was destroyed in a Celtic rebellion led by Queen Boudica in A.D. 61, but quickly rebuilt.

The documents show that only a few years after it was established, London was already a thriving town of merchants and traders. The records include references to beer deliveries, food orders and legal rulings.

 

One tablet carries the date Jan. 8, A.D. 57, making it Britain's earliest dated hand-written document. Fittingly for a city that is now the world's commercial capital, it's about money -- an ancient IOU in which one freed slave promises to repay another "105 denarii from the price of the merchandise which has been sold and delivered."

 

The wooden tablets were preserved in the wet mud of the Walbrook -- then a river, now a buried stream.

 

"The water keeps out the oxygen that would normally cause decay," Jackson said. "Our sticky Walbrook mud is like the ash of Pompeii or the lava of Herculaneum" -- Roman towns in Italy preserved by volcanic eruptions.

 

In Roman times, the tablets were covered in wax, on which words could be inscribed with a stylus. The wax has not survived, but some of the writing penetrated to the wood and can still be read.

 

Classicist Roger Tomlin, who deciphered the inscriptions, said looking at the ancient handwriting had been "fun."

 

"You're thinking your way into the hand of someone else who lived 1,900 years ago," he said. "Your eyes are setting foot where man has never been before, at least not for a very long time."

 

 

 

ARTICLE SOURCE

 

[luisam]

On 2/6/2016 at 0:59 PM, vibranium said:

One tablet carries the date Jan. 8, A.D. 57, making it Britain's earliest dated hand-written document. Fittingly for a city that is now the world's commercial capital, it's about money -- an ancient IOU in which one freed slave promises to repay another "105 denarii from the price of the merchandise which has been sold and delivered."

 

Sound kind of a joke: "January 8 A.D. 57"!

WHY?

I understand that the A.D. format of year counting started about  the year 525 Anno Domini (A.D). Till then, Romans, and probably the rest of the "so called" Roman civilization used the AUC system, for "ab urbe condita", which means something like "since the founding of Rome",

So there is no way to have an inscription saying year AD 57!  They started using that denomination about 468 years later! Numerically, the current era starts with AD 1 on 1 January 754 AUC, so, if anyone cares for it, I guess  the tablet carried something like January 6, AUC 811 .

[vibranium]

4 minutes ago, luisam said:

Sound kind of a joke: "January 8 A.D. 57"!

 

They are probably using the non-technical date for normal readers

[flitox]

18 hours ago, luisam said:

 

Sound kind of a joke: "January 8 A.D. 57"!

WHY?

I understand that the A.D. format of year counting started about  the year 525 Anno Domini (A.D). Till then, Romans, and probably the rest of the "so called" Roman civilization used the AUC system, for "ab urbe condita", which means something like "since the founding of Rome",

So there is no way to have an inscription saying year AD 57!  They started using that denomination about 468 years later! Numerically, the current era starts with AD 1 on 1 January 754 AUC, so, if anyone cares for it, I guess  the tablet carried something like January 6, AUC 811 .

of course, but if you give this information, 99.9% of the reader will have no clue of the date according to our calendar....so yes they should have given both but the author had certainly a number of word constraint so he/she skipped this

[flitox]

to add some fun, they should have given the date accoding to the hejira calendar only, which would have given a date way older for us and you'd be saying: that article is bullshit, there was no romans in england at that time, there was even no roman empire yet....

[luisam]

27 minutes ago, flitox said:

of course, but if you give this information, 99.9% of the reader will have no clue of the date according to our calendar....so yes they should have given both but the author had certainly a number of word constraint so he/she skipped this

 

Never thought that some readers might take seriously a funny remark; reminds me something like a caveman looking at his calendar and saying; " Today is 20,000  BC, February 21, the day Ice Age ended...". OK, so for not to be "funny", all author should have done is state "One tablet carries the date Jan. 8, 811 (AUC for ab urbe condita, equivalent to  A.D. 57), making it Britain's earliest dated hand-written document"

[flitox]

11 minutes ago, luisam said:

 

Never thought that some readers might take seriously a funny remark, just like 20,000  BC, February 21, the day Ice Age ended.... OK, so for not to be "funny", all author should have done is state "One tablet carries the date Jan. 8, 811 754 (AUC for ab urbe condita, equivalent to  A.D. 57), making it Britain's earliest dated hand-written document

i definitively miss the funny nature of the remark ... anyone who thought it was ad 57 actually  written on the tablet, raise your hand, please