# Albertini Tablets

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The '''Albertini Tablets''' ({{langx|fr|Tablettes Albertini}}) are a set of 33 (or 34) legal documents in [Latin cursive](/source/Latin_cursive) written in ink on 45 [cedarwood](/source/cedarwood) tablets from the years 493–496. They were discovered in 1928 by local miners in a cache on the estate of [Jabal Mrata](/source/Jabal_Mrata) near the [Algeria](/source/Algeria)–[Tunisia](/source/Tunisia) border, just south of ancient [Theveste](/source/Theveste) and beyond the southern frontier of the [Vandal Kingdom](/source/Vandal_Kingdom).<ref name="Small2018">{{cite book|author=David Small|title=Methods in the Mediterranean: Historical and Archaeological Views on Texts and Archaeology|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y92mDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA126|year=2018|publisher=Brill|isbn=978-90-04-32940-9|page=126|quote=The specific location of the estate in the Djebel Mrata is unknown, but Matigny plausibly suggests that the estates were located along Oued el-Horchane}}</ref><ref name="Albertini pp. 301–303">{{cite journal | last=Albertini | first=Eugène | title=Documents d'époque vandale découverts en Algérie | journal=Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres | year=1928 | volume=72 | issue=3 | doi=10.3406/crai.1928.85808 | pages=301–303 | url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_1928_num_72_3_85808 | language=fr}}</ref> They are all dated by the [regnal year](/source/regnal_year)s of the Vandal king [Gunthamund](/source/Gunthamund).<ref name=AHM>Andrew H. Merrills, [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662778.001.0001/acref-9780198662778-e-149 "Albertini Tablets"], ''[The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity](/source/The_Oxford_Dictionary_of_Late_Antiquity)'' (Oxford University Press, 2018), vol. 1, pp. 42–43.</ref><ref name=RBH>R. Bruce Hitchner, [https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195046526.001.0001/acref-9780195046526-e-0152 "Albertini Tablets"], ''[The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium](/source/The_Oxford_Dictionary_of_Byzantium)'' (Oxford University Press, 1991).</ref><ref name=SC>Simon Corcoran, [https://www.academia.edu/8732142/Tablettes_Albertini "Tablettes Albertini"], ''The Encyclopedia of Ancient History'' (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) pp. 6499–6500.</ref> They are named for [Eugène Albertini](/source/Eug%C3%A8ne_Albertini), who edited the first transcription.<ref>Douglas Boin, ''A Social and Cultural History of Late Antiquity'' (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018), pp. 183–184.</ref> The tablets are presently conserved at the [National Museum of Antiquities and Islamic Art](/source/National_Museum_of_Antiquities_and_Islamic_Art) in Algiers, Algeria.

The place where the documents were found is [Sahara](/source/Sahara)n pre-desert at the limit of the cultivable zone and of permanent human settlement.<ref name=SC/> The tablets show that in the Vandal period [arboriculture](/source/arboriculture) (including of [olive](/source/olive)) and [floodwater irrigation](/source/Spate_irrigation) were practised in the area.<ref name=RBH/> Besides agriculture, the tablets reveal the legal, social and economic practices in and on the fringes of the Vandal Kingdom.<ref name=SC/> They also provide useful information about [Late Latin](/source/Late_Latin) grammar and phonetics.<ref name=RBH/>

==References==
{{reflist}}

Category:Vandal Kingdom
Category:490s
Category:1928 archaeological discoveries

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