Wax tablets - Roman writing tablets
Who wants to wonder on the written paths of Roman Antiquity, takes the ancient wax tablet with pencil! On the waxen writing page out of wood and wax nothing is for eternity. The Roman wax tablet in latin cera or as well tabula mostly was rectangular, with real beeswax covered tablet out of wood: the ancient wax tablet.
The ancient wax tablet was used until the Middle Ages and it was written on it with a pencil (lat. stilus) by scratching the letters into the wax cover.
How did it occur with the Romans and the ancient wax tablets?
In the Roman time for official correspondence as well as for private use the wax tablet was used as writing material.
- black wax tablet out of massive beech 9x14cm
- the writing tablet comes inside a soft cotton bag
- roman ABC page included as writing pattern
- with instruction
Erase the wax tablet: "tabula rasa" - how does that work?
The texts on the wax tablet could be revised or be smoothed with the flat side of the pencil all the time. Therefore you hold the pencil as flat as possible and pull (not push!) it over the wax surface for spreading the wax evenly again. The school lessons would have been unthinkable without the Roman wax tablet at that time - every student had a ancient wax tablet with himself at the time of the Romans - and obviously they were happy, that they could correct their mistakes so easily.
Tabula rasa: clean the tablet
The known concept „tabula rasa" by the way comes from the smoothing of wax surface of ancient wax tablets with the ending of the pencil or stilus and means something like "erased tablet" or as well "cleaned tablet" - in the sense of a reuse.
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