Spanish police seize ‘very rare’ 2,000-year-old bronze Roman tablet  

The tablet was a legal document and an imperial decree by Emperor Tiberius

Credit: Telegraph

Police in Madrid have seized what they have described as a “very rare” ancient Roman legal document cast in bronze dating two millennia to the time of Emperor Tiberius.

Spanish police agents spotted the bronze tablet when it was advertised online as an item due to be auctioned in Madrid, then found out that the seller had bought in an antiquities shop in Seville but without any paperwork.

The police suspect that the tablet, an imperial decree regulating the privileges and pay of soldiers and veterans from the Roman army, may have been stolen or extracted illegally from an archaeological site due to the lack of documentation to demonstrate a legal provenance.

On investigation, it was found that the piece had not been included in Spain’s national inventory of archaeological assets, as required by law.

“The bronze Roman legal tablet is especially important given that documents of such enormous legal, historical and archaeological significance found in the Iberian Peninsula are very rare,” the police said.

The seller of the bronze tablet bought it from an antiquary store in Seville

Credit: Telegraph

The decree was promulgated immediately after the death of Caesar Augustus, Tiberius’s predecessor as Roman emperor.

A court in Madrid ordered the seizure of the bronze tablet and has asked for the relevant authorities in Spain’s Ministry of Culture to carry out a full study of the artefact and decide where it should be stored or displayed.

Throughout the Republic and Empire periods, the Romans regularly had statutes, edicts, decrees and treaties engraved on bronze tablets, with some legal important documents exclusively distributed in that format, and not on stone.

Illegal trade in Roman-era antiquities is not unusual in Spain. In 2020, a routine inspection of a seafood store in Alicante revealed a cache of 13 Roman amphorae in a fish storage facility.

Also last year, three decorative parts of Roman columns were found in the garden of a Seville mansion.