A unique medieval wood and wax notebook has been found intact with its leather case inside a latrine in Paderborn, Germany. It dates to the 13th or 14th century, and is in exceptional condition, preserved by the archaeological miracle that is ancient human waste.
Archaeologists overseen by the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association (LWL) discovered the notebook in an excavation before construction of a new city administration building. Obscured in a wet clump of earth (night soil?) that smelled exactly as bad as you imagine, the object only revealed its secret identity was after conservators at the LWL restoration workshop cleaned it.
It is made of wood and consists of ten pages coated with wax so they could be written on and then reused. Eight of the pages are on both sides of four leaves; the first and last pages are the insides of the cover and back. The book was so tightly bound that conservators only had to clean the outside. The inner pages were completely clean, the wood unwarped and the thin layers of wax still perfectly intact complete with the original text written with a stylus.
The text is written in two directions, depending on how the book was held, but it appears to be from a single hand. [Dr. Sveva Gai, the LWL city archaeologist in Paderborn]: “That suggests it was used spontaneously as a notebook.”
Regarding the writing implement, Bretzel explains: “The stylus is pointed at one end to scratch the letters into the wax. The other end of the stylus was flat or spatula-shaped. This allowed the wax to be smoothed and the writing erased, making the tablet reusable.” […]
The wax still covers all the inner surfaces of the tablets and is largely inscribed with cursive script. Gai: “The Latin language—also an indication of an upper-class owner—and the characteristics of the cursive script date this book to the period between the 13th and the end of the 14th century. The wax, however, doesn’t just show the most recently written pages. The rubbing of an older script is still clearly legible.”
The full text has not yet been transcribed, although it next on the agenda. The writing is difficult to decipher because spelling and handwriting were idiosyncratic. Researchers hope revealing the content of the notebook will shed light on who the author might have been and what he was using the book for. The center of Paderborn in the Middle Ages had upper middle class homes and it’s possible the notebook belonged to a merchant who was recording his transactions.
The leather binding is decorated with an embossed pattern of fleurs-de-lis that cover the surface. This may suggest it originated in France, but the flower also symbolized purity and the favor of God, so it may have nothing to do with the French monarchy.
The first priority is to stabilize the organic materials of the notebook. The wood and wax will be analyzed to determine their composition, the resin mixture, any pigments that may have been added, melting point, etc. The leather pouch and wood are currently in distilled water which is being changed regularly to keep the materials from becoming brittle.
Meanwhile, the excavation is ongoing. Other objects found in the five latrines discovered at the site include stave barrels, a knife, proto-stoneware pottery and curious silk fabric remnants that were torn into rectangular pieces. Archaeologists suggest these were scraps left from worn clothes that were torn to use as a very luxurious toilet paper.
Silk as toilet paper also suggests to Gai the author’s elevated status: “As soon as this latrine can be assigned to a specific plot of land, archival research could be used to try to identify the residents of that plot. Then, in the best-case scenario, it would be possible to link the wax tablet to the name of a specific person.”
* This article was originally published here
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