“I ASK YOU IN YOUR OWN INTEREST NOT TO LOOK TOO SHABBY.”
A message that only true friends or family could deliver and only then with a certain degree of caution – it takes love to tell the unvarnished truth!
The note could easily have been written by any of us today, in a text or email. Instead it was written 2,000 years ago in a Roman settlement known as LONDINIUM, modern London. It, along with a treasure trove of
wood tablets was just discovered during a construction project for Bloomberg’s new European headquarters in London.
Most amazing is that this note (one of 405 writing tablets unearthed on London’s Queen Victoria street), was written on bees’ wax pressed on wood. The original wax has long disappeared but impressions from the writing were pressed into the wood which was miraculously preserved.
As one article described:
“The preservation of the tablets is in itself remarkable, as wood rarely survives when buried in the ground. The wet mud of the Walbrook, a river that dominated the area in the Roman period but is now buried, stopped oxygen from decaying the wooden tablets, preserving them in excellent condition.”
The find is historical for another reason. On one of the wood tablets, archaeologists identified the earliest mention of the city’s name ever found, dating to mere years after the city’s founding in 43CE.
“IN LONDON, TO MOGNOTIUS.”
(“Londinio Mogontio”)
Sends chills up the spine….
ROME ON THE CUSP 