Although on the account of their materials, writing tablets fall into a sort of nobody's ground between codicology and epigraphy. The truth is, that they make up the oldest book form known to us. As a matter of fact, we still have many clay tablets from the third millennium B.C. mostly coming from Mesopotamia. Although the clay tablets are adopt less, the most abundant of all, the tablet format is not constrained to any material in particular, and that includes even precious metals, like the case of the gold plates of Pyrgi that we can admire in the image. A very curious sort of metal tablets is the so called, tabellae defixionum or damnation tablets, written on lead with occasionally, strange signs or minute letters. They were buried together with figurines that presumably symbolize the person they were supposed to damn. But the most utilized material for this sort of book form was for sure wood. In the Greek world, the wooden tablets were used at least from the times of Homer. Its use has also been discovered in Egypt, ancient Israel and the Etruscan world. The diffusion of wooden writing tablets in the classical world was extraordinarily wide, mostly due to their cheap price but probably also because they could be transported and stored very easily. And their use for their daily life writing needs was perpetuated in Europe, and the paper became an object of domestic consumption. The tablets were made up of wood sheets in a variable number, two, three, or more, held together by means of a metal ring, or leather thong. Forming in this way, a sort of rigid and hard notebook that received the name of codex, codicillus, or pugilares. The sheets could be prepared to receive writing in different ways. For instance, the famous Vindolanda tablets, presently in the British Museum, are really thin and therefore very convenient to transport and store. Sometimes they were polished and whitened so that one could write on them with pen or brush and ink and then they are called tabulae dealbatae. But on most occasions, the modality utilized, is the one described in the ninth century by Saint Aldhelm in one of his famous riddles. It goes like this: My first birth came forth from honey-bearing bees, but then my outer part grew from trees. Shoes gave me a tough back. Now, an iron goad scores my fair face and with its turns, flicks our furrows like a plough, but to the field it brings nourishing seed from heaven, which yields great harvest with thousand-fold food. Alas, that such a holy crop must be removed with cruel weapons. If you wish you can stop now the video and try to solve the riddle. I guess you solved it. But just in case, here is the solution. The outer part coming from the trees is of course the wood from which the tablet was made, carving in the middle part in the shape of a very shallow book that was then filled in with beewax. The shoes leather is most probably the thong that held the tablets together in diptychs or polyptychs or maybe some sort of covering. The plough is the stylus with which one wrote on them. The harvest is of course the written text that could be erased by rubbing with the opposite side of the stylus, that was shaped as a spatula. During the Middle Ages, wax was mixed with tar and that formed its blackish hue. The use of writing tablets was so common that tablets became a sort of token of the literate man or woman, and the usual way of carrying them was hanging from the belt, usually falling on the left thigh, so that the carrier could easily catch them with the left hand, and write with a stylus in the right. Because writing tablets remained the cheapest writing support for centuries, until paper became common in the west, they were normally used for drafts, accounting, and school exercises. Saint Jerome, for instance, used to write his works on tablets that he delivered to professional copyists who would transcribe the text onto papyrus or parchment. And the image we see now, Hildegard von Bingen, doing exactly the same. Individuals also sent letters of friendship written on tablets. In 390, Saint Augustine apologized to his correspondent, Romanianus because he had addressed to him a letter written in parchment instead of on wax tablets. And from his words, we understand that sending a letter on one's wax tablets was a token of a deep esteem. As it was presenting somebody with a wax tablets dictate. But writing tablets were also utilized as weapons in several occasions that we know of. When Saint Patrick arrived in Ireland, "cum tabulis in manibus scriptis" that is, with writing tablets in his hands, folks interpreted that artefact as a powerful weapon. And we would be tempted to think that those primitive Irish people believed that they have some sort of magical power if we didn't know of some persons being killed with tablets as criminal weapon. As was the case of a younger student of Corvey, and many years before the martyr, Cassian, if we are to believe Gregory of Tours account. Apart mention deserves the ivory tabellae known as consular diptychs. They were waxed in their inner side, with the outer side splendidly decorated. They were made on the occasion of somebody's elevation to the consulate, and given to friends and relatives as presents to commemorate the appointment. As many as 67 of such pieces have been preserved. The oldest, Vienna sacerdotal diptych from 388, now in the archaeological museum in Madrid. The first proper consular diptych dates from 406 and is in the Cathedral of Aosta. The most recent one is from the 7th century. The high number of consular diptychs preserved can seem striking. It is due to the rich exterior ornamentation and to the fact that many of them were recycled for book bindings.
