- Berne zinc tablet
The Berne
zinc tablet (also "Gobannus tablet") was found in the 1980s inBerne . It is inscribed with an apparentlyGaulish inscription, consisting of the four words, each on its own line, the letter formed by little dots impressed onto the metal:: ΔΟΒΝΟΡΗΔΟ ΓΟΒΑΝΟ ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ ΝΑΝΤΑΡΩΡThe dedication is to
Gobannus , a Gallo-Roman god, the name simply meaning "the Smith"."Brenodor" is probably a placename, "Brenno-duro-" "town ofBrennus , c.f. "Salodurum" >Solothurn , "Vitudurum" >Winterthur , Gaulish "-duron" "town" deriving from PIE "dhur-" "door"."Nantaror" may refer to the
Aare valley (containing as first element "nanto-" "deep valley with a stream/river"), and "Dobnoredo" seems to be an epitheton of "Gobano", maybe composed of "dubno-" "world" (Old Irish "dumhan" (Modern irish "domhan", c.f.Dumnorix ,Donald (Gaelic "Domhnall") and "rēdo-" "travel" (Old Irish "riad"), or "rēdā" "chariot" i.e. "world-traveller" or "world-charioteer", so that the inscription may mean approximately "to Gobannus, the world-traveller, dedicated by the people of Brennoduron in the Arura valley".Since the inscription consists of four proper names, it cannot straightforwardly be considered in the Gaulish language. The Datives in "-o" may be either Gaulish or Latin. Use of the
Greek alphabet however seems to suggest that when the tablet was inscribed, Roman influence was not yet overwhelming, and Gaulish probably still in wide use. That the tablet does date to Roman Gaul is suggested by the final Ρ of ΝΑΝΤΑΡΩΡ: it was at first written as a Latin R, the additional stroke having been removed again as a scribal error. Mixing of Greek and Latin letters is also attested from a number of Gallo-Roman coins.The tablet is made of
zinc , and on grounds of this it was considered a forgery for some time, since production of zinc is unattested in this region prior to the 16th century. The alloy however turned out to be different from modern zinc, containinglead andiron as well as traces ofcopper ,tin andcadmium (Rehren 1996). It was concluded that the zinc of this tablet was collected from a furnace, where the metal is known to have aggregated,Strabo calling it "pseudoarguros" "mock silver" (in 1546,Georg Agricola re-discovered that a white metal could be condensed and scraped off the walls of a furnace when zinc ores were smelted), but it is believed that it was usually thrown away as worthless. Since the tablet is dedicated to the god of the smiths, it is not unlikely that such zinc remnants scraped from a furnace were collected by smiths and considered particularly smithcraft-related.References
*Rehren Th. (1996) "A Roman zinc tablet from Bern, Switzerland: Reconstruction of the Manufacture", in Archaeometry 94, The Proceedings of the 29th International Symposium on Archaeometry, Eds S. Demirci et al., Ankara, 35-45.
Further reading
*Karin Stüber, "Schmied und Frau", Budapest (2005, ISBN 963-8046-55-4).
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