LOT 0114

Roman Wooden Tablet with 'Pactum Dotis' Marriage Contract

FIRST HALF OF 4TH CENTURY A.D.

5 1/2 x 6 3/8 in. (27 grams, 14 x 16.1 cm).

Rectangular wooden tablet, probably cedarwood, the inner side with a recessed panel inscribed with 20 lines of inked text in Roman cursive script, two small holes, the bigger in the upper rim, the smaller in the centre of the lower rim; the flat outer side inscribed with 14 lines of inked text; in a good state of preservation with signs of age and parts of the text barely visible. [No Reserve]

Acquired by Albert Sfez in the early 1950s.
Formerly the property of Monsieur Alain Sfez, a Belgian collector; acquired by gift from his father, Albert Sfez, in 1965.
Acquired by a London dealer in 1973.
From an important London collection since 1975; thence by descent.

Accompanied by a copy of an illustrated academic report by Professor Dr phil. Peter Rothenhöfer.

This tablet will be published by Peter Rothenhöfer together with further documents from the same collection in a monograph (presumably in the series Münchner Beiträge zur Papyrusforschung und antiken Rechtsgeschichte).

See Bowman, A.K., Life and letters on the Roman frontier: Vindolanda and its people, London, 1994, for discussion of the uses of Roman writing tablets; Rothenhöfer, P., Neue römische Rechtsdokumente aus dem Byzacena-Archiv / New Roman Legal Documents from the Byzacena Archive, (forthcoming).

Professor Dr Peter Rothenhöfer, Department of History (Zhuhai Campus) states: 'This important tablet shows that its use was apparently not restricted to the administrative sphere but widely spread in civic life and used for private purposes. As handwritten documents from the late 3rd and 4th century AD are quite rare, this tablet is generally of great importance for the history of Latin palaeography. The text is fluently written and shows a uniform typeface. Typical features of ancient writing can be observed: The text is continuously written without any separation between words (scriptio continua), sentences have no dots at the end.'

Wax tablets written in Greek or Latin, were used by Romans as account registers (codices accepti et expensi); for transactions (for example, the tablets of the banker Lucius Caecilius Iucundus found in Pompeii); for lists of goods, inventories, and notes to be kept and archived; for Roman magistrates to annotate the salient events of their bureaucratic activities; for writing letters; for drawing up legal texts of various kinds: legacies, declarations of births and citizenship, reports of trials and diplomata militaria.