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Name : natal day invitation to Sulpicia Lepidina
What it is : A wooden tab with carbon - based ink
A birthday invitation penned on a thin wood tablet was found at the Roman fort of Vindolanda in the U.K.
Where it is from : Vindolanda Roman fortress , in Northumberland , U.K.
When it was made : A.D. 97 to 103
bear on : Queen Puabi ’s lyre : A bull - headed music maker play for Mesopotamian royalty 4,500 years ago
What it evidence us about the past :
This wooden pad is the earliest get it on example of Latin writing by a cleaning lady , Claudia Severa , who invited her good booster Sulpicia Lepidina to her natal day party . The invitation was incur at the popish fortress ofVindolanda , where O - costless filth helped preserve legion constitutional artefact , includingshoesandcamping equipment , that commonly would have disintegrated over clip .
The postcard - sized tab amount 8.8 by 3.8 inches ( 22.3 by 9.6 centimeters ) , and the text was made with carbon - found ink on both sides .
One side of the letter names both the writer and the addressee and reads , " To Sulpicia Lepidina , wife of Cerialis , from [ Claudia ] Severa , " accord to theBritish Museum , where the aim is house .
The other side is the party invitation . The text , according to a translation from the British Museum , reads as follows : " Claudia Severa to her Lepidina , greeting . On September 11 , sister , for the day of the solemnization of my natal day , I give you a warm invitation to check that that you come to us , to make the Clarence Day more gratifying for me by your reaching , if you are present . Give my greeting to your [ husband , Flavius ] Cerialis . My [ hubby ] Aelius [ Brocchus ] and my short Logos send him their greetings . "
— Sutton Hoo helmet : A gold- and precious stone - encrusted relic with association to Beowulf and a lost Anglo - Saxon king
— papist scutum : An 1,800 - year - honest-to-god buckler drop down by a Roman soldier who likely go in battle
— Babylonian tablet preserves scholarly person ’s 4,000 - year - old geometry slip
All of this text was probably prescribe to a scribe , who write it down in a slight , elegant book . But in a 2d handwriting fashion in the lower - ripe corner , Claudia Severa herself has written at the bottom of the invitation in a less graceful handwriting , " I shall expect you , sister . Farewell , sister , my dearest soul , as I hope to prosper , and hail . " Although Severa was clearly literate and able-bodied to write the letter of the alphabet herself , her social status likely allow her even role of a scribe to pen missives on her behalf .
At least1,700 writing tabletshave been recovered from Vindolanda since thefirst one was happen in 1973 , and they render an over-the-top coup d’oeil into the daily lives of Roman military families alongHadrian ’s Wall . But the letter from Claudia to Sulpicia is the well bed , as it is both a touching admonisher of the importance of family and solemnization , as well as theearliest exampleof a popish woman ’s Latin handwriting .
