Re: Roman stylus

A few thoughts on this.

How typical of a newspaper to crop off the right edge of the picture, and
not give a transcript of the inscription.

The letter forms are close to Roman inscriptional capitals, not the rustic
forms that you would expect in a casual joke. And it must be quite hard to
inscribe an iron stylus deeply enough for the inscription to survive,
though no doubt it's soft wrought iron with almost no carbon to harden it.
This suggests to me that the thing iwas professionally made and sold as a
souvenir.

Burial in the foul, anoxic mud of an urban stream would have prevented much
corrosion.

Museum of London Archaeology (MOMA) is a splendid organisation. All
building work in the City of London (that is, the oldest part of London
corresponding roughly to the Roman city) that involves demolishing an old
building down to the ground and making new foundations must by law be
accompanied by an archaeological examination, and that is what MOMA does.
Despite its name it is not actually a part of the better known Museum of
London.

A couple of years ago, when I was making a short film about the Rose-Ringed
Parakeets that now infest London, I discovered that a MOMA investigation in
Lime Street had uncovered a wall painting of the first century AD that
included a picture of two of these parakeets, popular pets in antiquity and
imported from India along the Silk Road. There is also an older record of
them from Pergamon. The film is at
https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D3e0EdaURacA%26t%3D26s&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40lsv.uky.edu%7C9da88e928bc64df4579308d712d80810%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636998591368118405&sdata=iCD%2BN2joTLMSnCpc0Ft3DqIDfZOuZsOYBYncL2TZhDQ%3D&reserved=0

RH