Wax Tablets

• The Roman Wax Tablet, known as Cerae, was a reuseable device made of two pieces of flat wood hinged together with wax on each inner surface.
• A text could be inscribed in the wax with a stylus or similar implement. The earliest known example of a wax tablet dates from the Uluburun Shipwreck (c. 1300 BCE).

Description

• A letter could be written on the wax, the tablet sealed with a lead seal and be posted to a Statio in another part of the Roman Empire via the Roman Road system.
• The Tablets were reuseable. After reading the tablet, the wax was smoothed over, and new writing could be written onto the wax. They were mainly for personal use.
• The Codex was derived from these wooden writing tablets.

Vindolanda Tablets

• The Vindolanda Tablets are wax tablets inscribed in ink. Thousands were found in the fort of Vindolanda, Britannia, dating around 100 CE, and are now in the British Museum.
• The wax tablet could be reused, but an inked wooden tablet had to be thrown way. They were for personal use.