The answer to this riddle poem, written in Latin in the 7th century AD by Bishop Adhelm [fn2] is a wax tablet (Latin: pugillares [fn3]).

Wax tablets have been found made out of wood [fn4], bone, ivory and occasionally of metal [fn5].  The extant examples I know of are all rectangular but in illuminations they are sometimes shown with rounded or peaked tops.

Black colored beeswax was by far the most common but green, red and uncolored wax also appear to have been used [fn6].

Although plain covers were common, others were elaborately carved, particularly those made of ivory or whalebone.  Roman legal documents were plain wooden wax tablets, usually tied closed with a string and sealed, and had the text duplicated  in ink on the outside cover.  It is likely that the use of wax tablets was spread throughout Europe by the Romans.

Many tablets had only two leaves but others have been found with 6 or 8 leaves.  Some were hinged [fn7], others were held together in a leather pouch [fn8].

Wax tablets were made in a variety of sizes from the tiny set from late 14th century York which were only 5 cm x 3 cm to the large 21 cm x 7.5 cm tablets from 7th century Ireland [fn9]. Many were palm sized which would have made them convenient to handle and hold.

Wax tablets were used to record many things including legal documents, financial accounts, poetry, love letters, and religious writings.  They were used to make rough drafts that would later be committed to parchment, and for school children to practice their letters.

Easy and inexpensive to make (depending on the material used), handy to carry, and reusable, these handy portable notebooks were in use for over 3000 years and have been found in many countries.  I have included a partial list of extant wax tablets at the end of this document.  The earliest known wax tablet was found in a shipwreck off the Turkish coast dated to the 14th century B.C. [fn10] and they appear to have been used up into the 18th century.[fn11]

References to wax tablets have appeared in many writings [fn12] including Homer’s Iliad [fn13], Ovid’s Metamorphoses [fn14], Shakespeare’s Hamlet [fn15] and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales [fn16]. “In the Mystère de la Résurrection acted in 1491, the reply of the child to the blind man, who asked him if he could read or write was: Oy dea! en papier ou en cire.” [fn17]  Illustrations of wax tablets can be found in many medieval manuscript paintings.  A tablet and stylus were considered essential items that a monastery supplied to the monks [fn18]. In 13th c. Paris there were enough tablet makers to create a guild of tabletiers. [fn19]

It appears that wax tablets were a part of every day life for a long span of time.  Although only a few wooden tablets remain from the Middle Ages, it is likely that many existed, but they were eventually lost, or broken and discarded, and then rotted away.  Aldhelm’s riddle indicates they were something that would have been commonly known.

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Footnotes:
1.  Priest-Dorman. [back]
2.  Bishop Aldhelm wrote a series of Latin riddle poems.  The original Latin version is:
     ”XXXII. PUGILLARES
     Melligeris apibus mea prima processit origo,
     Sed pars exterior crescebat cetera silvis;
     Calciamenta mihi tradebant tergora dura.
     Nunc ferri stimulus faciem proscindit amoenam
     Flexibus et sulcos obliquat adinstar aratri,
     Sed semen segiti de caelo ducitur almum,
     Quod largos generat millena fruge maniplos.
     Heu! tam sancta seges dirts extinguitur armis.”
        - quoted from Bowling Green U. website  [back]
3.  There are many names for wax tablets depending on the time and culture, including ceracula (cera is Latin for wax), tabellae, dipthyra (two leaves), tripthyra (three leaves), codex (though this often refers to paper books), and vitelliani (love letters). [back]
4.  The tablet of Aldhelm’s riddle is one made of wood.  A variety of wood seems to have been used including box, beech, sycamore, maple, lime, lemon, pine, cedar (Hughes), yew (Webster, p.80), fir (Smith).  The type of wood would depend a lot of what woods are available in the area.  [back]
5.  Hughes, Archaeologia, Alexander (1987,p. 385)  [back]
6.  Hughes, p. 264-265; Priest-Dorman. [back]
7.  The one on the Turkish shipwreck had an ivory tube hinge (Bass), some may  have had a cloth hinge like a book, others with a leather thong, string or wire through holes.  [back]
8.  Aldhelm’s “shoes of tough hides” likely refers to these leather pouches.  Two examples of leather pouches can be seen in the List of Extant Wax Tablets.   [back]
9.  See List of Extant Wax Tablets  [back]
10.  Bass, p. 730-731; see List of Extant Wax Tablets   [back]
11.  “Entries of various kinds in churches and monasteries were kept on wax tablets, the use of which was in some such cases carried on as late as 1722.”  (Hughes p. 274)   [back]
12.  Hughes lists many additional examples.   [back]
13.  “…he sent him to Lycia and gave him baneful signs in a folding wooden tablet”
          - from Homer’s Iliad, Book VI, line 169 (quoted from Bass).  [back]
14.  “She holds the pen in her right hand, and a blank wax tablet in her left.  She begins, then hesitates; writes and condemns the writing; scribbles and smoothes it out” – Ovid, (translated) lines 522-524   [back]
15.  “Yea, from the table of my memory
       I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
       All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
       That youth and observation copied there;
       And thy commandment all alone shall live…
       My tables,--meet it is I set it down,” Act 1, Scene 5.   [back]
16.  “His felawe hadde a staf tipped with horn,
       A payre of tables al of yvory,
       And a poyntel polysshed fetish,
       And wroot the names alwey, as he stood,
       Of alle folk that yaf hym any good,…
       And whan that he was out atte dore, anon
       He planed awey the names everichon
       That he biforn had writen in his tables”
          - from the “Somonour’s Tale” in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (quoted from Priest-Dorman)  [back]
17.  “en papier ou en cire” translates as “on paper or on wax”.   [back]
18.  Priest-Dorman [back]
19.  Priest-Dorman; Hughes  [back]