Roger Tomlin has deciphered 2,000-year-old documents from Roman London

One wooden tablet displays the earliest hand-writing ever found in the United Kingdom, written a decade or so after London was founded. Emeritus Fellow Roger Tomlin read and translated the text, written in a cursive-style Latin.

“One tablet (dated 8 January 57 [AD]) is the City of London's first financial document.” Roger Tomlin

A cache of Roman waxed wooden tablets have survived in a deep waterlogged anaerobic environment, the bed of a stream which formerly ran through central London. Although the writing was in the wax (which has now disappeared) it has been recovered from the underlying wood, marked by a sharp point (stylus) used by a scribe. The tablets offer a glimpse into the everyday lives and financial transactions of the very first inhabitants of London.

Tomlin has written a book about the decipherment and translation of 90 of the Roman writing-tablets, Roman London's first voices: writing tablets from the Bloomberg London excavations, 201014, which was launched by the publisher, the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), on 1 June 2016.

MOLA will be publishing two further books about the excavation and an exhibition will open at the site in autumn 2017.

Further reading

Short video by Bloomberg

BBC article

The Guardian article

National Geographic article