Roger Tomlin | |
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Born | 1943 (age 80–81) |
Academic work | |
Discipline |
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Sub-discipline | Roman Archaeology Classical Archaeology Greek and Latin text |
Institutions |
Roger Simon Ouin Tomlin FSA (born 1943) is a British archaeologist specialising in the translation of Latin text and epigraphy. Tomlin is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. [1]
Tomlin first studied Honour Moderations (Mods) at Oxford University before continuing onto study Literae humaniores (Greats). His college tutor was Peter Brunt, the Camden Professor of Ancient History. [2]
After graduating, Tomlin worked in the United States for a couple of years, before returning to take up a post at the University of Oxford teaching Late Roman History. He succeeded Richard Wright as editor of the Roman Inscriptions of Britain project and started working intensively on translating inscriptions. [2] Tomlin published the first translation of the curse-tablets from the Roman Baths at Aquae Sulis (Bath, UK) in 1988. [3] Tomlin translated the Bloomberg tablets, a collection of 405 wooden tablets inscribed with ink, found between 2010 and 2013, during excavations for the Bloomberg building in London. [4] In 2019 a stylus from Roman London was translated by Tomlin; it was found to contain a humorous message to give to someone as a souvenir. [5]
Tomlin is a member of the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents in Oxford. [6]
Tomlin was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 5 May 1976. [7]
In March 2017 he received the István Hahn prize and gave an honorary lecture at Eötvös Loránd University. [2]
Tomlin had a Festschrift dedicated to him in 2019, titled "Litterae Magicae: Studies in honour of Roger S. O. Tomlin". [8]
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Verulamium was a town in Roman Britain. It was sited southwest of the modern city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, England. The major ancient Roman route Watling Street passed through the city, but was realigned in medieval times to bring trade to St Albans. It was about a day's walk from London.
Aquae Sulis was a small town in the Roman province of Britannia. Today it is the English city of Bath, Somerset. The Antonine Itinerary register of Roman roads lists the town as Aquis Sulis. Ptolemy records the town as Aquae calidae in his 2nd-century work Geographia, where it is listed as one of the cities of the Belgae.
Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe,, known as Barry Cunliffe, is a British archaeologist and academic. He was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2007. Since 2007, he has been an emeritus professor.
The London Mithraeum, also known as the Temple of Mithras, Walbrook, is a Roman Mithraeum that was discovered in Walbrook, a street in the City of London, during a building's construction in 1954. The entire site was relocated to permit continued construction and this temple of the mystery god Mithras became perhaps the most famous 20th-century Roman discovery in London.
The Roman Baths are well-preserved thermae in the city of Bath, Somerset, England. A temple was constructed on the site between 60 and 70 AD in the first few decades of Roman Britain. Its presence led to the development of the small Roman urban settlement known as Aquae Sulis around the site. The Roman baths—designed for public bathing—were used until the end of Roman rule in Britain in the 5th century AD. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the original Roman baths were in ruins a century later. The area around the natural springs was redeveloped several times during the Early and Late Middle Ages.
In the localised Celtic polytheism practised in Great Britain, Sulis was a deity worshiped at the thermal spring of Bath. She was worshiped by the Romano-British as Sulis Minerva, whose votive objects and inscribed lead tablets suggest that she was conceived of both as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess and as an effective agent of curses invoked by her votaries.
Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus was a 1st-century king of the Regni or Regnenses tribe in early Roman Britain.
A curse tablet is a small tablet with a curse written on it from the Greco-Roman world. Its name originated from the Greek and Latin words for "pierce" and "bind". The tablets were used to ask the gods, place spirits, or the deceased to perform an action on a person or object, or otherwise compel the subject of the curse.
The Greek Magical Papyri is the name given by scholars to a body of papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, written mostly in ancient Greek, which each contain a number of magical spells, formulae, hymns, and rituals. The materials in the papyri date from the 100s BCE to the 400s CE. The manuscripts came to light through the antiquities trade, from the 1700s onward. One of the best known of these texts is the Mithras Liturgy.
The Vindolanda tablets are some the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. They are a rich source of information about life on the northern frontier of Roman Britain. Written on fragments of thin, postcard-sized wooden leaf-tablets with carbon-based ink, the tablets date to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Although similar records on papyrus were known from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, wooden tablets with ink text had not been recovered until 1973, when archaeologist Robin Birley, his attention being drawn by student excavator Keith Liddell, discovered some at the site of Vindolanda, a Roman fort in northern England.
Common Brittonic, also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, is a Celtic language historically spoken in Britain and Brittany from which evolved the later and modern Brittonic languages.
Karaindaš was one of the more prominent rulers of the Kassite dynasty and reigned towards the end of the 15th century BC. An inscription on a tablet detailing building work calls him “Mighty King, King of Babylonia, King of Sumer and Akkad, King of the Kassites, King of Karduniaš,” inscribed ka-ru-du-ni-ia-aš, probably the Kassite language designation for their kingdom and the earliest extant attestation of this name.
A Romano-Celtic temple or fanum is a sub-class of Roman temple found in the north-western Celtic provinces of the Roman Empire. They were the main places of worship in Gallo-Roman religion. Romano-Celtic temples differ from classical Roman temples, and evidence shows they had much continuity with earlier Celtic temples. Many were built on earlier sacred sites of the Celtic religion.
The Bath curse tablets are a collection of about 130 Roman era curse tablets discovered in 1979/1980 in the English city of Bath. The tablets were requests for intervention of the goddess Sulis Minerva in the return of stolen goods and to curse the perpetrators of the thefts. Inscribed mostly in British Latin, they have been used to attest to the everyday spoken vernacular of the Romano-British population of the second to fourth centuries AD. They have also been recognised by UNESCO in its Memory of the World UK Register.
A votive offering or votive deposit is one or more objects displayed or deposited, without the intention of recovery or use, in a sacred place for religious purposes. Such items are a feature of modern and ancient societies and are generally made to gain favor with supernatural forces.
Stephanie Mary Dalley FSA is a British Assyriologist and scholar of the Ancient Near East. Prior to her retirement, she was a teaching Fellow at the Oriental Institute, Oxford. She is known for her publications of cuneiform texts and her investigation into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and her proposal that it was situated in Nineveh, and constructed during Sennacherib's rule.
The Bloomberg tablets are a collection of 405 preserved wooden tablets that were found at the site of the Bloomberg building in the financial district of London. Excavations of the site took place between 2010 and 2013, after which the current Bloomberg building was constructed on the site of the archaeological dig.
Niskus is a Romano-British river god, mentioned one time from a lead curse tablet inscription. The theonym is related to a local river deity linked to the River Hamble. It is possible that the origin of the theonym is connected with the ancient Greek word νῆξις - floating. Found on Creek Badnam in Southampton in 1982, this curse tablet from the Greco-Roman world was created in about 350 or 400 AD by Muconius, a man angry at the mystery thief who stole his gold and silver coins.
Goetia is a type of European sorcery, often referred to as witchcraft, that has been transmitted through grimoires—books containing instructions for performing magical practices. The term "goetia" finds its origins in the Greek word "goes", which originally denoted diviners, magicians, healers, and seers. Initially, it held a connotation of low magic, implying fraudulent or deceptive mageia as opposed to theurgy, which was regarded as divine magic. Grimoires, also known as "books of spells" or "spellbooks", serve as instructional manuals for various magical endeavors. They cover crafting magical objects, casting spells, performing divination, and summoning supernatural entities, such as angels, spirits, deities, and demons. Although the term "grimoire" originates from Europe, similar magical texts have been found in diverse cultures across the world.