Wax tablets or writing tablets as unique notebooks
Tabula Cerata
Unique notebooks
Since early antiquity, people have written on writing tablets. The oldest known tablets come from Nimrud, Assyria. (879 BC) They contain astrological texts written in cuneiform script. The Greeks and Romans also made extensive use of them, and in Western Europe the writing tablet remained in use throughout the Middle Ages until the 16th century. There are many references in literature to these writing tablets, but we also come across various depictions of writers using such a writing tablet. Not only writers, but also medieval illuminators and their apprentices used the ‘tabula’ to make sketches, for example. The writing tablet lives on in our language to this day; the term ‘tabula rasa’ dates back to Roman times and the use of writing tablets. It means ‘a table scraped clean’ and is used as an expression to mean ‘starting with a clean slate’.
It is fair to say that the writing tablet or wax tablet was a common writing material for everyday correspondence such as letters, bills, schoolwork and the like. They were usually made of wood, sometimes of ivory. The tablet had a in depth surface: the groove within the edges was filled with wax. Writing was done in the soft wax using a stylus, a metal pen that was widened at one end so that what had been written could be erased. Often, two, three or more wax tablets were bound together, creating a sort of book – a diptych, triptych or polyptych respectively. The text on the inside could be preserved and transported intact in this way. The wax tablet is the precursor to the slate and was used extensively in education, particularly in the late Middle Ages. In some parts of Europe, writing tablets continued to be used until the 19th century.
Most of the tablets were rectangular, and some were rounded at the top. Their sizes varied, but most were roughly 30 x 20 cm. The luxury models, made of ivory, were much smaller. The wood used ranged from boxwood, cedar, sycamore and oak to many other types. The wood was usually not painted any colour. In fact, a ban was issued in 1333 by the Provost of Paris forbidding the use of any colour other than that of the wood itself. Whilst the wood was not painted, it was carved, as were the metal and ivory wax tablets in particular.
In the Middle Ages, there was a specialised trade of tablet-makers known as ‘tabletiers’. They are mentioned, amongst other sources, in Etienne Boileau’s book: ‘Le livre de métiers’. (1) The small tablets made of ivory or silver were crafted by goldsmiths. In Paris, their trade was also subject to regulations, as was the case with other guilds, and they too recognised the distinction between master and apprentice. Their patron saints were Saint-Éloi and Saint-Léonard, and on the feast days of both saints they naturally had a day off.
Place of manufacture: Egypt
Louvre, Department of Byzantine Art and Christianity in the East.
The wax on which people wrote was often dark, black in colour, but certainly not always. Elisabeth Lalou (2) writes in her article on wax tablets that waxes of various colours were used. According to her, this variety of colours can be seen in the depictions of writing tablets in the miniatures. There, alongside black, we also see green, red and yellow depictions of writing tablets. The wax was made from, amongst other things, turpentine resin, linseed oil and beeswax, supplemented with soot.
The use of wax tablets, which dates back to antiquity, was still common practice in the 13th century. The king’s chamberlain, Jean Sarrazin, used them to record the expenditure of the court of Louis IX; records have survived for two years, 1256 and 1257. These are documents of exceptional rarity, as these tablets – which were transcribed into registers – were intended for reuse and were therefore regularly erased.
This is evident from the line that crosses out the entire text engraved in wax, making the handwriting all the more difficult to read. There are only seven comparable examples, but they all date from after this specimen.
Jean Sarrazin’s tablets provide a sort of overview of the accounts the king held with the Knights Templar, where his treasure was kept.
Source: Paris, Archives Nationales, AE II 258 (formerly J 1168), Trésor des Chartres
Writing was done using a so-called stylus, made of wood, bone, metal or silver. The stylus was sharp at one end for writing and flat at the other for erasing what had been written.
As mentioned earlier, several wax tablets were bound together to form a codex – in other words, what we would call a book. The book was sewn together with strips of parchment and also had parchment glued to its spine.
The article by Elisabeth Lalou that I have used focuses primarily on the use of wax tablets in medieval France. But their use was, of course, much more widespread, and people wrote on wax tablets in most European countries.
It wasn’t just pupils who used the writing tablets to learn to write; their use was widespread throughout society. Princes, clerks, administrative staff and merchants all made use of them; even royal accounts were written in wax. Also of particular interest are the writing tablets bearing municipal accounts, such as those from Leipzig, Nuremberg and Senlis.
A fine example from the Netherlands is the so-called Tolsum writing tablet. It turned out to be a Roman writing tablet recording the purchase of a slave, which was discovered in 1914. (3)
Nor should we forget the artistic use made of them by miniature illuminators. These writing tablets were indispensable tools in the workshops of medieval miniature painters and scribes; they served primarily as teaching aids, sketchbooks and reusable scrap paper. Due to the high cost of parchment, miniature painters could not afford to waste an animal skin on trial sketches or mistakes.
In summary, we can say that the use of the writing tablet lasted for a long time. As a medium for writing, the wax tablet outlasted papyrus, parchment and paper. And this medium was mainly used for more ‘ordinary’ texts such as notes or bills, etc. More special texts were written on papyrus, parchment or paper.
Literature
Brown, Michelle P. “THE ROLE OF THE WAX TABLET IN MEDIEVAL LITERACY: A RECONSIDERATION IN LIGHT OF A RECENT FIND FROM YORK.” The British Library Journal, vol. 20, no. 1, 1994, pp. 1–16.
Les tablettes à écrire de l’Antiquité à l’époque moderne, E. Lalou, dir., Turnhout, Brepols, 1992 (Bibliologia, 12).
Lalou Élisabeth, « Les tablettes de cire médiévales » Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes, 147, 1989, p 123-140
Bull Reinhard, Moser Ernst, Kuhn Hermann, « Wachs als Beschreib- und Siegelstoff, Wachsschreibtafeln und ihre Verwendung », dans Vom Wachs-Hoechster, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Wachse, Frankfurt, 1968, p. 785-894.
Lalou Élisabeth, Les comptes sur tablettes de cire de la chambre aux deniers de Philippe III le Hardi et Philippe IV le Bel (1282-1309), sous la direction de Robert-Henri Bautier, Paris, 1994
M.H. Smith: De la cire au papyrus, de la cire au papier: deux mutations de l’écriture? Gazette du livre médiéval Année 2003 43 pp. 1-13
Historiek: Tolsum’s writing tablet (and the purchase of a slave)
