Between drawings and writings: Georgios Boudalis in Naples (and Rome)

From 4 to 16 May Dr Georgios Boudalis, Head of Book and Paper Conservation at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki, joined the TabulaRasa team in Naples.

This was a great opportunity for the project. The Herculaneum excavations brought back to light an extraordinary variety of wax tablets (larger and smaller examples, arranged as diptychs, triptychs, and polyptychs) with no parallel anywhere else in the world. These finds are now preserved at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN).

Some of these tablets are examples of what the Romans called pugillares or pugillaria: small wooden notebooks “that can be held in one hand”. This is, in fact, the etymological meaning of adjective pugillaris (from pugillus, “small fist”, but also “handful”). Interestingly, in most occurrences, the term appears in the plural form. This should not come as a surprise: pugillaria were made up of more than one wax tablet. In was therefore the tablets – in plural – that could be held in one fist.

While the wax layer is sometimes partially preserved – even though nothing can be read on its surface today – in most cases, the binding was completely destroyed by the Vesuvian eruption. How were the tablets joined together? By means of what element, and made of what material? Was it easy to open the codex and write on its pages? How fragile was such an object?

To answer these and many other questions, Boudalis came into play: he is one of the most prominent specialists in ancient bookbindings and binding techniques. Have you ever wondered how manuscripts are held together and protected, while still remaining easily readable? If so, have a look at the webpage of the exhibition The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity that Boudalis curated in 2018 at the Bard Graduate Center and enjoy this journey through centuries of craftsmanship.

Boudalis applies a flawless methodology to the investigation of ancient objects: technical drawing. Within the framework of the scientific collaboration agreement between the MANN and the University of Naples L’Orientale / ERC TabulaRasa Project, Boudalis spent two weeks carefully drawing, at 1:1 scale, the fragile and fragmentary wooden tablets preserved at the MANN, using his pencil on sheets of white paper.

This is not a research approach one encounters every day, but it is truly irreplaceable. As Boudalis told us, “the better you understand, the better you draw; and the better you draw, the better you understand”.

During the mission, tablets belonging to five different pugillaria or small wooden codices were examined, thanks to the generous support of the Museum, which made a dedicated space in its Restoration Laboratory available to Boudalis. These ideal working conditions would not have been possible without the interest and care of the Museum staff, especially the Director, Francesco Sirano, as well as Floriana Miele, Mariateresa Operetto, and Valentina Fiorito.

Unfortunately, on the five booklets no traces of writing survive, either penned in ink or incised into the wood by the strong pressure of a stylus through the wax. However, among them, two examples must be regarded as truly unique. I am referring to two pugillaria, one roughly the size of a modern smartphone, the other even smaller. There are no parallels for them either in the MANN collection or in other collections. These booklets are extremely refined: the internal tablets measure less than 1 mm in thickness.

We were all surprised by the results of Boudalis’s inspection, especially because he was able to retrieve a tiny fragment of the binding thread, that had escaped destruction. Within the framework of TabulaRasa, we intend to carry out specific analyses on this fragment, which are expected to tell us more about the wooden pages it once held together.

It is crystal clear that these refined pugillaria must have been luxury objects, particularly when compared with the other three sets of tablets, which were certainly functional tools for everyday writing, but were neither as small nor as finely carved.

During his two-weeks stay, Boudalis also had the opportunity to examine a set of six wax tablets now preserved at the Vatican Library. These tablets, dated by the editors Rosario Pintaudi and Pieter J. Sijpesteijn¹ to the 6^th century CE, were acquired on the antiquarian market but certainly originated in Egypt. As far as it can be ascertained – the wax is almost completely preserved, but in many places the writing is practically illegible –, they contain a variety of texts, ranging from documents like leases or sales, to mathematical tables (especially complex operations with fractions) and geometry problems.

At first sight, the set seems to be a kind of reference notebook for someone dealing with fields and foodstuffs. Here again, it is not clear how the tablets were bound together. Two of them have a wax layer on one face only, and therefore must have been the first and the last tablet of the book. The imperfect alignment of the binding holes in the six tablets, already observed by the first editors and also noted by Boudalis, may suggest that the tablets were not always arranged in their current order. If confirmed, this could indicate that their configuration changed over the course of their active life, before they eventually entered the Vatican Library.

Let us go back to Naples. I mentioned everyday writing earlier. In fact, pugillaria were primarily iintended for everyday writing needs: note-taking, shopping lists, accounts and so on. In other words, whatever you would write today in the notes app on your mobile phone, a Roman would have written with a stylus on the waxed pages of his personal pugillar.

And that is not all!! Some passages by classical authors – one above all, Catullus² – suggest that pugillaria could play an important role in literary composition. Ideas, notes, literary parallel or even first drafts of some length could be entrusted to wax tablets and, after careful labor limae, transcribed onto papyrus or parchment in a more stable form.

We know very little about the individuals to whom these pugillaria belonged. The volcanic eruption obscured much of their original context, including the identities of their owners. The wax layer has completely melted, and no writing is visible on these tablets. This does not mean, in general, that writing on wax tablets is always irretrievably lost: the stylus may sometimes leave traces on the wood beneath the wax. In the case of these pugillaria, however, no such traces have been identified. Yet it is tempting to imagine that at least one of them may have belonged to a would-be poet, who – why not? – once wrote a few verses on a wax tablet now preserved at the MANN.

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1. Rosario Pintaudi – Pieter J. Sijpesteijn (ed.), Tavolette lignee e cerate da varie collezioni [Papyrologica florentina, 18], Firenze : Gonnelli 1989 ↩︎
2. «Yesterday, Calvus, idle day / we played with my writing tablets, / harmonising in being delightful: / scribbling verses, each of us playing with metres, this and that, reciting together, through laughter and wine» (Catul. Carm. L, 1-6: Hesterno, Licini, die otiosi / multum lusimus in meis tabellis, / ut convenerat esse delicatos: / scribens versiculos uterque nostrum / ludebat numero modo hoc modo illoc, / reddens mutua per iocum atque vinum; translation by A. S. Kline). ↩︎

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