Германы Падерборн хотын малтлагаас 700 жилийн настай бичгийн дэвтэр олдлоо

The object reached the restoration workshop in Münster as a wet, unremarkable lump of earth that still smelled after centuries underground. Only when conservator Susanne Bretzel cleaned it did its shape come through: a tiny book of wood and wax, wrapped in a stamped leather case.

It came from one of five latrines uncovered beneath the site of a new city administration building in Paderborn, in western Germany. The regional heritage authority, the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL), announced that the notebook dates from the 13th to 14th century and is the only find of its kind in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Its wax pages still carry Latin cursive, scratched in with a stylus and readable after 700 to 800 years. The same latrine held scraps of fine silk, torn into rectangles, which the archaeologists suspect were used as toilet paper.

The last notes written in the wax are not the only ones that survived. Traces of older, rubbed-out writing are still clearly visible beneath them.

The Notebook Is Smaller Than a Smartphone

The leather case measures 10 by 7.5 centimeters (about 4 by 3 inches), and the wooden tablets inside are 8.6 by 5.5 centimeters. The book has ten pages. Eight are coated with wax on both sides, and the first and last only on one. It is bound and fits into a small leather pouch with a flap.

The case survived intact; only the stitching has come loose. Its surface is stamped with small, regular rows of lilies covering the whole leather. Comparable medieval pieces are known from Lübeck and Lüneburg, where similarly wet soil preserved them, but none was recovered as a complete book, LWL culture chief Barbara Rüschoff-Parzinger said.

The writing tool explains how such a book worked. A stylus of metal, bone or ivory had a pointed end to cut letters into the wax and a flat, spatula-shaped end to smooth the surface again. That made the tablets reusable, a medieval wax tablet book that could be wiped and filled again and again.

Erased Notes Are Still Readable Beneath the Last Layer

The wiping was never perfect. According to Paderborn city archaeologist Sveva Gai, the abraded earlier writing is still clearly legible under the final entries. The LWL hopes high-tech imaging can separate the overlapping layers and make each one readable.

The text runs in two directions, depending on how the book was held, but it appears to come from a single hand. To Gai, that points to quick, everyday use as a notebook. A transcription has been commissioned. Rüschoff-Parzinger said that even specialists find the script hard to read: individual words stand out, but some may be distorted by misspellings. Only after transcription will the Latin be translated into German.

Gai’s first guess is that the owner was a Paderborn merchant who jotted down deals and thoughts in shorthand. Merchants, she noted, could read and write, unlike most people at the time. How the notebook ended up in a latrine is unknown, though she suggests it may simply have been dropped.

Silk Scraps Point to a Wealthy Household

The silk fragments were partly torn into rectangular rags, some of them very finely woven and decorated. Bretzel suggests that a once-costly fabric, ready to be thrown out, found a last use as toilet paper.

For Gai, silk wipes, Latin script and the lily-stamped case all suggest a well-off owner. Central Paderborn was home to the upper middle class, she said, if not necessarily nobility. LWL chief archaeologist Sandra Peternek noted that the lily stood for purity, royal power and divine favor in the Middle Ages.

The site borders the immunity wall of the former Abdinghof monastery and has been under excavation since December 2024. The latrines lay below early modern buildings as sealed, airtight chambers cut down into the limestone of an 11th-century quarry.

Alongside the notebook, the team found barrel staves, a knife, textile remnants, complete proto-stoneware vessels and bits of basketry, which support the date. If the latrine can be tied to a specific property, archive research might link the notebook to a name.

Up to a Year in Distilled Water Before Display

Conservation comes first. Until all the test results are in, the leather and wood are kept in distilled water that is changed regularly. Peternek’s team wants to learn what mix of wax and resin coats the pages, whether pigments were added, where it melts and which tree the wood came from.

Bretzel estimates the full conservation could take up to a year. The notebook is then expected to go on display at the LWL-Museum in der Kaiserpfalz in Paderborn.

When she first opened the book, Bretzel only had to clean its outside. The pages were pressed together so tightly that no dirt had reached them, and the wood had not warped, leaving the wax intact.

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