Posted by SWN on July 08, 1998 at 03:36:32:
Metallic Documents of Antiquity
Edited by Kerry A. Shirts
H. Curtis Wright, BYU Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4, (Summer, 1970) pp.457-475
While preparing the general exams for the Ph.D. at Case Western Reserve University I noticed recurring
references to metallic documents in the literature that pertains, in one way or another, to ancient
records and libraries. Most of the references were obscure and casual--like the merest mention of
"various metals" in a discussion of ancient book materials, [Bruce M. Metzger, The text of the New
Testament; its transmission, corruption, and restoration (2d ed.; New York: Oxford University Press,
1968), p. 3. There is, typically, no further mention of the subject in the entire book.]
or a sourceless seriation including "The Nicean creed[!], Chinese books with leaves of gold,"
and the "Telugu plate" as exemplars of writing on metal. [F. Thelma Eaton, The history of the
book; an outline and a reading list . . . (4th ed,; Champaign, Ill.: The Illini Bookstore, 1959),
p. 12.]
Such references, while interesting enough in their own right, invariably pose a number of
unanswered questions, especially if the reader is interested in the sensory data of written
communications: Which metals have been used for the reception of writing in antiquity? What is
the Telugu plate? How can descriptions of the metallic media of the Nicene Creed and specific
gold-leaf manuscripts of Chinese books be located?
References to metallic documents are also found in ancient classical literature. Plutarch,
for example, mentions a Lycian spring on the outskirts of the city of Xanthus which on one
occasion boiled up of its own accord and overflowed in the presence of Alexander the Great,
depositing a bronze writing tablet [delton chalken] at his feet. The tablet was inscribed
with ancient writings indicating that the kingdom of the Persians would be overthrown by
the Greeks. Alexander, therefore, encouraged by the metallic document, proceeded forthwith
to reduce the coastal areas instead of then and there waging an all out war with Darius.
[Plutarch, Life of Alexander 17. 4-5.] There are similar notices elsewhere in Plutarch and
in Pausanias, [De genio Socratis 577E-F; Pausanias, Descriptio Graecae 4. 26, 6-8.] and they
doubtless occur in other ancient authors.
Descriptions of metallic documents are relatively easy to locate if they are properly
referenced in citations. An example of such referencing is the use by Friedrich Blass
of the oldest Greek letter extant in order to illustrate certain linguistic phenomena
in a discussion of the so-called epistolary aortist tense. [Friedrich Blass, Grammatik
des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, bearbeitet con Albert Debrunner (11. Aufl.; Gottingen:
Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, 1961), 206.] The letter is identified as a leaden tablet from the
4th century B.C., and appropriate references are provided. Blass, of course, is more
interested in the linguistic information provided by the document than in its material.
His only concern is "der Aorist im Briefstil"--the fact that the aorist is inscribed in
lead is unimportant. But his references nevertheless lead to important discussions of the
tablet, including translations and photographic plates. [Adolf Deissmann, Licht vom Osten;
Das Neue Testament und die neuentdeckten Texte der hellenistisch-nomischen Welt (2. u. 3.
verb. u. verm. Aufl.; Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1909), pp. 103-104; also the
English translation, Light from the Ancient East . . . (New York: George H. Doran, 1927),
pp. 150-52. For discussion see S. Witkowski, Epistulae privatae Graecae quae in papyris
aetatis Lagidarum servantur (Editio altera auctior; Lipsiae: 1911), appendix no. 1, and A.
Wilhelm, "Der alteste griechische Brief," Jahreshefte des Oesterr. Archaeol, Insitut 7 (1904),
94-105.]
Most published accounts of metallic documents, at least in classical sources, have been
effectively removed from the layman's view by a simple convention of scholarship. The
implications of this convention first came to my attention upon perusing a basic paleographical
treatment of ancient writing materials.
Of the various materials which have been used. . . to receive writing, there are three, viz.
papyrus, vellum and paper, which. . . have. . . displaced all others. But of the other
materials several, including some which at first sight seem of a most unpromising character,
have been largely used. If the ordinary material fail, they [the ancients] must extemporize a
substitute. If something more durable is wanted, metal or stone may take the place of vellum or
paper. But with inscriptions on these harder materials we have, in the present work, but little
to do. Such inscriptions generally fall under the head of epigraphy. Here we have chiefly to
consider the softer materials on which handwriting, as distinct from monumental engraving, has
been wont to be inscribed. Still. . . there are certain exceptions; and to some extent we shall
have to inquire into the employment of metals, clay, potsherds, and wood, as well as of leaves,
bark, linen, wax, papyrus, vellum, and paper as materials for writing. [Edward Maunde Thompson,
An introduction to Greek and Latin paleography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), p. 8. Italics ours.
Ibid., pp. 8-43, for the entire discussion of ancient writing materials and implements.]
It had never really occurred to me, prior to reading the above, that scholarly distinctions
between documents/monuments, [Discussed by John Howland Rowe, "Archaeology as a career," Archaeology
14 (1961), 45-55.] palaeography/papyrology/epigraphy, [For the distinctions between palaeography,
papyrology and epigraphy, with copious bibliographical coverage of ancient Greek and Latin writing in
general, see Martin R. P. McGuire, Introduction to classical scholarship; a syllabus and bibliographical
guide (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1961), pp. 86-107. "Papyrology is confined
by convention to the investigation of Greek and Latin writing on papyrus. . . . It should be noted that
handbooks of Greek paleography give a large amount of space to papyrology, since the great majority of the
earliest extant Greek documents written on perishable materials are papyri. . . . The formal separation of
paleography and papyrology from epigraphy, however, has been mutually disadvantageous to these three
disciplines," ibid., p. 96.] etc., tend to relegate the study of specific aspects of writing to specific
categories within the highly fragmented study of writing. [On the fragmented study of writing see our
Metagraphy and graphic priority; a discursus for catalogers (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Case Western
Reserve University, 1969), pp. 30-32.] Once the bibliographical implications of such conventions are
understood, however, the investigation of this or that phase of writing is greatly simplified. For the student
of metallic documents this means that all sorts of inscriptions on metal are conventionally regarded by
classicists as archaeological monuments, and that scholars therefore tend to describe them in epigraphical,
rather than palaeolographical or papyrological, publications. Thus an inscribed piece of metal may have much
more in common with a sheet of paper than, say, with the Athenian tribute lists; but both are treated as
epigraphs solely because each of them is hard.
The bibliography accompanying this paper attempts to assemble some of the scholarly materials which deal with
the metallic documents of antiquity. Beginning with a know ledge of the golden laminae of Pyrgi, [The Pyrgi
plates were a lively topic of conversation among classicists when I became Classics Librarian at the University
of Cincinnati in 1965, as one of the professors had recently seen them on display at the Villa Giulia in Italy.]
the copper scroll from Qumran, and a nucleus of sources from the writings of Hugh Nibley, [See especially his Lehi
in the desert and the world of the Jaredites (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1952); and Since Cumorah. . . (Salt Lake
City: Deseret Book Co., 1967).] I began searching the epigraphical publications of classical literature. The result
is a preliminary list which shows less success in Near and Far Eastern studies than in Classics, but nevertheless
attempts to document the existence of at least one exemplar from most geographical areas of major importance in antiquity.
How Many Ancient Metallic Documents
Probably no one knows precisely how many ancient metallic documents exist today, but Nibley'sestimate of one hundred
examples is certainly low, since the number of Roman military diplomas alone had already exceeded that figure in 1924.
[Nibley, Since Cumorah, p. 251. "These tablets, of which only a few over a hundred examples are known, record the grant
of Roman citizenship and the right of legal marriage (connubium) to discharged veterans of foreign birth," Helen McClees,
"Inscriptions in the classical collection," Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 19 (1924), 167. An earthenware vessel
containing more than 400 small leaden plates was also discovered near Styra of Boeotia in 1860, E. S. Roberts, An introduction
to Greek epigraphy. Part I: the archaic inscriptions and the Greek alphabet (Cambridge: University Press, 1887), p. 197.] The
metallic document appears very early in the history of writing and may be found even after the invention of printing. Lead,
for example, has been used for writing in late medieval and early modern times, as "leaden plates inscribed with historical
and diplomatic records. . . are still in existence, which belong to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries." [Henry Guppy,
"Human records: a survey of their history from the beginning," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 27 (1942-43), 197. The
plates are connected with Venice and Bologna.] It is known also that large collections of metal documents have existed in
antiquity, and that they were frequently reserved for writings of considerable importance.
The use of bronze by the Greeks and Romans, as a material upon which to engrave votive inscriptions, laws, treaties, and other
official documents, is established by various authorities. The famous "Laws of the Twelve Tables" were engraved upon bronze,
and were suspended outside the Capitol at Rome. They most probably perished in the fire which took place in the reign of the
Emperor Vespasian, consuming the Capitol and destroying three thousand tablets of bronze or brass containing the laws, treaties,
and other important documents of the Roman Empire.
How much information has been preserved on ancient metallic epigraphs? It is too early to attempt definitive answers to this
question, as we know of no ancient treatises on metallic epigraphy, and modern treatments of the subject are widely scattered,
highly specialized, and often difficult to obtain. My own studies have thus far been more search than research, followed by
immense frustration over the impossibility of consulting many of the pertinent documents once their existence is known. [The
study of metallic epigraphy as a subject is further complicated by bibliographical problems arising from the archaeological
nature of the evidence, since specialization in archaeology "is necessarily by [geographical] area, as in the humanities,
rather than by subject matter, as in the natural sciences," Rowe, "Archaeology as a career," 55. Cf. Sterling Dow,
"Archaeological indexes; a review article," American Journal of Archaeology 54 (1950), 41-57.] Some preliminary observations
on the contents of metallic documents can be made, however, although the materials in the following bibliography must await
the careful collation and evaluation of competent scholars in many fields.
Most of the epigraphs listed bear relatively short inscriptions, [Cf. the two brief lines of a golden plate discovered
in southern Italy in 1951, Silvio Ferri, "San Vito di Luzzi (Cosenza). Frammenti di laminetta auree inscitte," Notizie
degli Scavi di Antichita, Ser. 8a, 11 (1957), fig. 1, p. 181; the three lines of Greek and two of Egyptian on a gold
foundation plate, Marcus N. Tod, "A Bilingual didication from Alexandria," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 28 (1942),
plate VI facing p. 56; and the golden trilingual plate of Darius with twenty-five lines, Gilbert Highet, "The wondrous
survival of records," Horizon, vol. 5, no. 2 (Nov. 1962), 79.] although there is some evidence to suggest that the
ancients also prepared lengthy metallic texts of which the Qumran copper scroll is a good example. [See John marco
Allegro, The treasure of the copper scroll . . . (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), passim, and Matthew Black,
The scrolls and Christian origins (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1961), pp. 3-12, and consult the bibliography for
additional sources.] Pausanias also claims to have seen in Boeotia a leaden book [molubdon] inscribed with Hesiod's
Works and days, a literary opus of some thirty Oxford pages. [Pausanias 9. 31, 4: "kai moi molubdon edeiknusan, entha
he pege, ta polla hupo tou chronou lelumasmenon eggegraptai de auto ta Erga." This passage is often
discussed, e.g., by Guppy, "Human records, 196, L. H. Jeffery, The local scripts of archaic Greece (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1961), p. 56, etc. "Lead was used in scroll form in the late Hittite empire, and this usage may possibly have
spread to the Greeks. . . ," ibid. "For another example of books written on sheets of metal, see [Pausanias] 4. 26. 8.
A good many inscribed rolls of lead have been found in tombs in Cyprus; but for the most part they contain either
monetary accounts or else curses levelled at some enemy. See J. H. Middleton, Illuminated manuscripts in classical
and medieval times, p. 2 sq.," J. G. Frazaer, Pausanias' description of Greece, translated with a Commentary
(New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1965), 5:158.] The seven bronze tablets discovered in 1444 at Gubbio, Italy, the
ancient Iguvium, seem to be larger than usual, ranging from 12x16 inches to 22x33 inches, and contain "the only
extant records of any considerable extent in the Umbrian dialect; that is, in that language which, with Oscan,
Latin, and several other dialects, makes up the Italic branch of the Indo-European family." [James Whitney Poultney,
The bronze tablets of Iguvium ("Philological monographs published by the American Philological Association," no.
18; n.p.: The American Philological Association, 1959), p.1.] All of the tablets except III and IV are inscribed
on both sides, and collectively contain more than 4,000 words, 54 long lines of which appear on the recto of tablet
VII alone. [Ibid., p. 1 and plate VIIa following p. 333.] These tablets deserve and receive close philological
treatment in a full-blown scholarly monograph of 341 pages. Pausanias also informs us that the Thirty Years' Peace
which terminated the so-called First Peloponnesian War was inscribed on a bronze monument [stele chalke] and displayed at Elis.
In front of the image of Zeus there is a bronze stele containing the terms of a thirty years'
peace between Lacedaemon and Athens. The Athenians made this treaty after they had subjugated Euboea for the second time. . . .
The treaty specifically states that the Argives were not officially acknowledged as a party to the peace between Athens
and Sparta, but that Athens and Argos might, if they desired, befriend one another in private. Such were the stipulations
of the treaty. [Pausanias 5. 23, 4. References to a bronze writing tablet [pinakion chalkoun] occur in at least two other
contexts in Pausanias 5. 20, 7 and 5. 24, 11. Many accounts of the Thirty Year's Peace may be perused without the slightest
hint that the treaty was ever inscribed on metal. The ancient accounts in Thucydides 1. 115 and Diodorus 12. 7 do not mention
bronze at all, and modern commentators virtually never notice it. Why the silence? Could it be that metal was so commonly used
for recording treaties and the like that it was seldom specified? Was "on metal" implied in statements like "the treaty was
recorded," as "on paper" is in "the letter was written"?]
A similar treaty on metal is known from ancient Anatolia.
It is worth recalling . . ., in this connection, that the contemporary Hittites of Asia Minor. . . had a certain predilection
for inscriptions on metal. Not only are their inscribed signets often composed of bronze or precious metals, but the same usage
was also applied to larger documents. Thus when the ambassadors of the great Hittite King Khetasira went to Egypt to make a
treaty with Ramses II they bore with them a silver plate on which the Hittite text of the treaty was engraved in the native
language and character. [Arthur J. Evans, Scripta Minoa; the written documents of Minoan Crete. . . Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon,
1909), p. 107. Cf. William Wright, . The empire of the Hittites . .. (London: James Nisbet, 1884), pp. 26-33, where the treaty
in translation occupies over seven normal English pages and extends to 200 lines. See also Archibald H. Sayce, The Hittites;
the story of a forgotten empire (London: Religious Tract Society, 1925), pp. 40-51, 117-18, 171.]
The use of bronze for recording certain types of juristic literature was also popular in Italy during the Hellenistic period.
"Exceptionally, leges and senatusconsulta were published on bronze tablets; international treaties were always so published."
[Fritz Schulz, History ot Roman legal science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), pp. 87-88. Italics ours, "Edicta magistratuum
were published on wooden boards (alba), which were destroyed at the end of the magistrate's term of office," ibid., p. 88.]
It should be observed that, whereas nineteenth century scholarship often boggled at these and similar metallic documents, a
recent article has explained their peculiarities on the assumption that they were initially published in Rome and later taken
to Italian and Greek towns where they were copied onto local tablets. [M. W. Frederiksen, "The Republican munical laws: errors
and drafts," Journal of Roman Studies 55 (1965), 183-98.] This meaty and important article fairly bristles with bibliographical
information on the metallic juridical literature of Rome and deserves careful study. Mommsen and his contemporaries regarded the
four bronze inscriptions from Tarentum, Veleia, Ateste and Heraclea as ingenious, poorly executed, and frequently unintelligible;
some even declared them the products of bungling draftsmen who frequently altered the texts, etc. The internal problems of these
inscriptions are thus met by questioning their evidential value.. . . .
In the following pages a fresh approach is ventured. . . . It seems better to start with the texts and the otherwise clear facts
of Roman documentary processes; to consider how and by whom the bronzes were prepared; and thus to attempt, without circularity,
to explain what has been rightly called their 'highly problematical form.' [Ibid., p. 183.]
Frederiksen breathes a new willingness to believe that Roman juristic literature was indeed published on metal and easily parries
the objection that bronze archives and letter writing on bronze plates are simply unthinkable.
From earliest times until the age of Augustus bronze was the usual form of publication in Italy. Unlike Greece, Italy had few
kinds of stone suited to the inscription of long texts, until the heavy Augustan exploitation of the Luna quarries; she had,
however, again unlike Greece, good supplies of bronze--a fact which more than any other explains the relative epigraphic
paucity of Greek and Republican Italy. [Ibid., p. 186. Italics ours. Cf. Theodor Mommsen, Romisches Staatsrecht ("Handbuch
der Romischen Altertumer," Bd. 1; Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1952-53), 1:256: "Bei dieser [internationalen]
Publication wird geschrieben, wie bei transitorischer Publication auf eine Holztafel; Publication auf Stein ist der romischen
Ordnung fremd."]
Frederiksen's conclusion is that the extant bronze epigraphs of the Republican period, if not the copies actually displayed at
Rome, "were the work of local scribes instructed by local magistrates." [Frederiksen, "Republican municipal laws," p. 187.]
As the treaty with Cibyra or the Pirate Law suggests, a city might allowably choose another medium, and wooden tablets were not
only permitted but common. . . . Nor should it be forgotten that most of Rome's allies, in Italy as well as abroad, possessed
public archives of a systematic kind. Since 225 B.C. we must suppose the existence of formulae togatorum and hence of censoriae
tabulae, doubtless increasingly assimilated to Roman models. Such local machinery was, at very least, adequate to the demands
that Rome might make of it, and it was not absurd for Roman legislators to rely upon allied initiative for the copying and
preservation of laws that concerned them. Thus it was certainly with the municipal laws and charters of the Republic. We
know them from the copies made in the towns themselves . . . .
A last example of extensive writing on metal cited here is a sophisticated document on four bronze plates bearing some
of the laws regulating Roman mining operations in the provinces. Two of the plates were discovered at Aljustrel, Portugal,
one in 1876, the other in 1907. Together their English translation requires three full pages of normal journal size [i.e.,
8 1/2x11 inches], an average of one such page per tablet side. [The three journal pages represent only three sides of the
two tablets, since the first tablet bears the same inscription on both sides.] They were written by officials with firsthand
experience at mining, "men who understood their subject thoroughly. . ." [A. D. Cummings, W. R. Chalmers, and H. B. Mattingly,
"A Roman mining document," Mine and Quarry Engineering, Augsut 1956, p. 339.] The first tablet deals in a general way with
provincial mining operations. This is obviously not something put together by a local official to suit the place under his
command, but something of a much wider application that had been developed over a long time and adapted to suit new conditions
as they arose. It was a code leaving few loopholes, well understood and accepted by the parties concerned. It had been applied
many times before and was just now being put into operation at Aljustrel and next year might well be initiated at a British mine.
The second tablet applies to a specific operation in a particular area and regulates, in
addition to mining practices, the use of public baths, the cobbling of shoes, the cutting of
hair, the fulling of cloth, and the exemption of schoolmasters from dues payable to the
procurator. [Ibid., pp. 341-42. It is interesting to note that women were charged twice as
much as men for the baths and could use them only in the mornings while the men were occupied, probably because the baths did
double duty as a laundry.]
If you want a copy of any of the other documents I have listed please feel free to email a request.