In an age before paper was available, when your only method of making a page to write upon was to either pound slices of papyrus together or to flay a hide and process it for several weeks, there existed a common alternative which was reusable, inexpensive, and conveniently portable. This object was the pugillare (plural: pugillares), also known as the waxed tablet. Pugillare means "handbook", and sets of pugillares with many tablets comprising a whole were also called codices, just as a book with paper pages is also known as a codex.

The waxed tablet could be of any size, but was usually made from either thinly sliced wooden boards or bone. On one or both sides of the tablet was a large recess which was filled with a shallow layer of colored wax meant to be written upon. These tablets would often have hinges of some sort, usually thong, and would be bound in collections of two or more to make little books.

The ensemble was not complete without the stylus. This was a pointed rod of metal or a metal tip held in a bone handle which was used to draw and write in the waxed surface. The opposite end of the stylus had a flat, tapered paddle which was used to smear the inscriptions back down into the flat wax surface.

Such tablets and styli date back to great antiquity. They continued to be used throughout the middle ages. According to George F. Bass in his article SPLENDORS OF THE BRONZE AGE (National Geographic, vol. 172, no.6, Dec. 1987), the oldest known "book" ever found was a wooden tablet found in a shipwreck off the southern coast of Turkey. The ship was sunk in the 14th c. B.C. This tablet, made of two panels, each small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, was hinged along the long side with an ivory tube hinge.

It is suspected that this ancient tablet book may have been a shipping record since it was found in the bottom of an amphora (large ceramic storage jar) filled with pomegranates. However, waxed tablets in general were used for a great number of purposes. They were used as note books, to send important messages, to draft formal writings, design patterns or decorations, to make plans, etc. In the excavation of 14th c. Novgorod, a tablet was found with an alphabet carved into the wooden surface side (Valentin L. Yanin, THE ARCHEOLOGY OF NOVGOROD Scientific American, Feb. 1990). This tablet would have been used by a student learning to write. (See Ilustration at right with writing styli and birch bark paper called Beresty)

In short, tablets were ideal for any kind of temporary composition, but it doesn't stop there. Another type of tablet was one that had an extra set of holes at the middle of the long side near the edge. When a book of tablets was closed a cord could be passed through and wrapped around the set. If a wax or lead seal were then applied to the cord it could be considered a secure document.

I had the opportunity to examine one such official document tablet set at the University of Michigan. It is a Roman birth certificate from 128 A.D. for a woman named Herennia Gemella. Both leaves are 6 5/16" high x 5 5/16" wide x 1/8" thick. The border rim around the wax cavity is II/ 16" wide. The black pigmented wax was very thin, and from close inspection I believe it to have been applied with a brush as one would lay paint. The wax did not cover all of the way into the corners, so it was easy to see how thin it was and how deep was the recess. The wax was also somewhat pitted, which in my experiments from laying wax, is consistent with air bubbles in the hot mixture.

The two panels were joined by cord or thong hinges which passed through a pair of holes along the long side edge opposite the single hole for sealing. This created a joined pair, sometimes called a diptych. The holes looked to have been auger cut (spoon bit), and the surface of the boards was far from neat. In fact, they showed the marks of the tools used to create them. On one of the panels an Imperial Roman insignia was burned onto the outer face. A complete duplicate of the inside text was also written on the outside panel so it could be consulted without opening the seal. Should it need to be verified, an official signatory could be called upon to inspect the contents and reseal the tablets.

The writing is intact on the waxed surfaces. It was written along the long side direction with letters about 3-4mm high. The point of the stylus glided lightly through the wax, rarely penetrating the thin coating as far as the wood. The grooves cut by the stylus are almost vertical on one side, and at a lower angle on the other side, indicating that the stylus was not held vertically, but rather more like a pencil.

I had the good fortune to visit the medieval monastery of St. Gall in St. Gallen, Switzerland where I was permitted to examine a tablet codex (book) of eight panels quite closely. They still had the 15th c. German writing cut in the black wax. All of the interior panels were two sided while the end panels were only waxed on the inside surfaces. There were no holes cut for binding cords, and instead there was a sort of glued-on parchment along the spine. This binding may be modern. The grain of the wood is typical of the tablets which I have seen; that is to say that the boards were cut as a radial section from the center of the tree. The grain is rather fine, making a smooth surface.

The dimensions of the tablets are about 14.8cm tall x 8cm wide x 4-5mm thick at the edges. The border surrounding the waxed recess is about 7.5mm along the length and about 1.1cm wide along the short sides. The depth of the waxed recess is about .75mm, which leaves about 2.5mm to 3.5mm thickness of wood under the wax of a two-sided tablet. This may seem like a rather tight tolerance for a craftsman to make without error, but actually, there is a set of tablets that show an even greater level of precision. A set of eight boxwood tablets were found in York at a dig sponsored by General Accident known as the Swinegate site in York, England. They are described by Sonia O'Connor in GENERAL ACCIDENT WAXED TABLETS PART 2 as measuring "50mm by 30mm, about 1.5mm thick at the margins and possibly less than 0.5mm beneath the wax!

The text of the General Accident tablets is laid out parallel to the long axis of the tablets and there are seven lines (of text) on tablet 2, side A." Her description also reports that there were no hinges or other bindings, and that the tablets were discovered inside a leather case which also contained a small metal stylus. Only the 2nd and 7th panels were hollowed on both sides.

Wood was not the only material available for use as a waxed tablet. On page 31 of Janet Backhouse's book about THE LINDISFARNE GOSPELS (Phaidon Press Ltd. 1981.) there is a photograph showing a tablet made of bone. This tablet is an end tablet for a multiple panel set and includes two holes for fastening. Like the Bronze Age example, it is small enough to fit in the palm of a hand.

The same photograph also shows several styli of bone and metal. The writing stylus had a wide, flat, chisel shaped end which tapered to a dull edge and was used for erasing. This technique involved wiping the incised lines back down into the surface of the wax by dragging the flat of the stylus over the lines at a very shallow angle while pressing. The tools in the picture that have heads ending in animal motif or sphere could be used for writing, but not erasing. They were actually used for scoring layout lines for calligraphy and pricking the holes used to align a straight edge before drawing them.

A.	Bronze Styli
B.	Bone Styli
C.	Side View
D.	Typical Shape
E.	Novgorod, 14th c.
F.	Springmount Bog, Irish. Early 7th c.
G.	German, Early 14th c.
H.	Closure with thong or cord

The process is simple. You will need the following items:

Wooden Boards (Boxwood or one of the following from the hobby store: cherry, maple, walnut)

Something to cut the shallow recess (X-Acto chisels or router)

X-Acto (or other) wide blade chiselA wide, flat, cheap brush (1" nylon works well)

Pigment (Lampblack, medium yellow, earth red, copper green)

An optional cord or thong (or alternately you can make a tube hinge from bone or wood using a drill)

An X-Acto knife -

A metal straight edge

A fine tooth saw

A fine point pencil (optional)

A 3/16" Drill (or spoon bit)

Beeswax

Small ceramic cup (sake cup)

Oven, (and mit or pliers to lift the hot cup of wax)

The first step is to select what type of wood to use and determine the dimensions. If you can get boxwood, great. Otherwise it is possible to buy small 24 inch boards about 3 inches wide and varied thickness. Make sure the grain lines of the wood, as seen from the end, run across the thickness and not in the direction of the width; otherwise you may have warping problems. Use a point or a dull knife against the straight edge to score the lines that mark the length of the tablets along the board, but do not saw them off yet.

You may choose any dimension you like, but if you would like to make a typical tablet set I will suggest the following specifications:

Length: 4"
Width: 3"
Thickness: 1/4"
Depth of recess: 1/ 16" or 3/64"
Hinge holes: 3/16 diameter, 3/16" in from spine and centered 1" from the top and 1" from the bottom.
Spine margin: 1/2" Remaining three margins: 1/4"

Now you will determine the width of the margins surrounding the recess for the wax. If you make the tablet recessed on both sides, make sure you make the recesses as close to the same depth on both sides as possible. You can line them all out at once.

You can mark the lengths and widths of the recess/margin edge with either the pencil, or score them with the knife. It is easy to mark the lengths with a ruler for all of the tablets at once by just running the marking tool all the way down the length of the board. Pick it up where the marks should end, but if you leave the ruler down you will get greater accuracy and save time.

Next cut the edge lines of the recess with the X-Acto blade as deep as the recess will be. The cleaner you make this line, the better your edges will look.

Now you hollow out all of the recesses. I find that the fastest way to do this is to set an X-Acto or other router tip for a depth of 1/16 inch and just clean out the insides with that. Then take the X-Acto chisel and slice along the recess floor out to the edge cuts to remove the final edging.

However, not everyone has this tool, so let's talk about a more medieval way to do it. This technique uses a chisel instead of the router. You will need to be especially careful to cut a consistent depth all the way across. To do this you will cut several channels about one chisel width apart. Always cut the channel at as perfect a depth as possible. This will allow you to control the depth over a wide area because by leaving some of the surface you have a point of reference to judge depth. Then go back and clean out the raised areas between and smooth the surface to a flat face.

You are now ready to separate the tablets by sawing them apart. Finish the woodworking by cutting small holes just big enough to accept a cord or leather thong. You may either drill this with a normal drill bit, or use an auger point driven by a bow if you want to be more authentic. The wood should now be sealed with a coating of hot beeswax painted onto the entire wood board, after the board has been warmed in an oven.

The amount of beeswax you will need depends the size of the tablet and the number of them. You will be melting it in a metal or ceramic cup. I use sake cups for convenience; which may be placed in a toaster oven or other oven and the wax melted at a medium low heat so as not to cause a fire.

You will also be coloring the wax. The Bronze Age wreck used 25% orpiment in the beeswax. Orpiment (arsenic disulfide) is a medium yellow rock, which is very poisonous. I don't suggest using it. Instead, you might consider using something like yellow ocher dry pigment. The most common color I have found seems to be lampblack, which can also be bought in a jar of dry pigment, but other colors were also used. Red, and green appear, but I wouldn't be surprised if blue or purple were also used.

The important thing seems to be that there is enough pigment to counter the translucency of the wax and create the right wax texture. This makes it a bit easier to see the linesyou inscribe with a stylus. I am not sure if consistency of texture was the main issue, but the consistency of the wax is important. Your wax should not tend to produce a lot of curls when you write, and it should be easy to smooth with flat wiping pressure from the erasing head of the stylus. It should not be too pasty, yet it should be soft enough that it can be mushed around a bit with that same flat paddle end.

Orpiment is a heavy color and thickens the consistency quite a lot. I have seen the lampblack used in actual medieval and ancient tablets and it did not look to have such a high concentration of the light and fluffy lampblack as to create the same texture as the orpiment wax that I made with ancient proportions.

To apply the wax, first melt the wax in the sake cup inside the toaster oven. Don't let it get hot enough to boil. Remember to keep the temperature down to a safe level. While it is heating, you can also place the tablets inside the oven to warm them. Pre-heating the wood will help the wax to sink deeply into the wood. This wil "slake" the natural thirst of the wood by filling the porosity before adding the colored wax. It is important that the colored wax does not soak down into the wood.

You will now use the large, flat brush to encase the tablets in a layer of hot wax, which soaks into the wood. Apply enough to completely seal the pores. This is especially important for the recessed areas, because if you don't seal them, the colored wax will soak down into them and leave pigment on the surface. While the boards are still hot you can wipe the excess off with a paper towel, or scrape it with a palette knife after it has cooled.

Place more wax into the cup and add enough lampblack to make it opaque. That is actually a lot of color by volume, but not by mass since it is a color with little body. The colored wax will flow better if you paint it onto slightly warmed wood, but that isn't required. Use the flat paintbrush (an old I" wide works well) and apply one thin layer of wax to the inside. You will have best results if you lay strokes next to each other with minimal overlap. Don't worry about filling perfectly into the corners. Don't worry about bumps and ridges. You will smooth them out later after it cools.

If you would like to manufacture some lampblack of your own you will need some kind of oil that will produce a dense carbon smoke. Linseed oil, a common art supply and furniture finish will be perfect and authentic. If you don't happen to have a nice little medieval ceramic oil lamp handy you can fake one by filling a peanut butter jar lid or other shallow metal receptacle with the oil and placing a piece of string or wick into it. Wave a metal plate such as a cookie sheet or pizza tray over the flame to collect the soot. This soot can be collected by scraping it into a jar with either a wooden slice or some other similarly edged tool, such as a credit card.

I made my styli from bone and from metal. The bone was easy. I found a solid bone and roughed out about a blank about 4" long. Then I drilled a hole in the end that would become the point. Into this I pounded a 1/16 diameter nail until it jammed in there. The other end of the nail was nipped off and eventually filed to a slender point. The point (before sharpening) can now be used as both a handle and a centering guide for carving the cylindrical shape of the handle. I roughed it down further with a grinder and finished with files. Make the blade of the chisel end a bit wider than the shaft. Also, the tip end of the bone should be rounded down to the metal point or given an abrupt taper so the point is visible while you write.

A metal stylus can be created by forging a soft 1/4 inch nail or some other soft iron rod. You will need some kind of anvil and hammer, some form of heat (like a propane torch), and a metal container of water for quenching. You will also need long pliers to hold the nail while you heat it. First, heat the nail head until it is red hot, and then forge it with downward strokes aimed more in toward the shaft. The idea is to spread the metal wide, not grow it longer as you taper the shape to a flat edge. Never pound the metal so much that it hardens and cracks. You'II have to anneal the metal (soften the metal by heating until it glows) a few times during the forging. This will keep it soft enough to to spread wide without work hardening to the point of cracking. You can finish by grinding and filing. The taper should be flat planed and I like to round the corners of the edge so they don't leave lines in the wax.

Once you have succeeded with the erasing head you can taper the point. You will probably want to give it a very long and gradual taper, always keeping a round section, all the way to the point. I do most of this on a grinder and I finish it with files.