Latin script in Africa

Latin was widely used across the Roman empire, also in areas where originally other scripts and writing systems were in place. Africa, the Roman province that corresponds more or less with modern Tunisia, is an example of an area where the Latin script was adopted by the local inhabitants.

An example is the tombstone of a 15-year-old boy from Carthage, which now sits in the collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands. The short text reads: "The good Licisippus lived 15 years. He is buried here."

Since its discovery, the tombstone has not received much attention. The Latin script of this tombstone was considered to be rather messy and therefore presumably uninteresting. We will take a closer look at this neglected tombstone and see which story it can tell about the use of Latin script by other peoples in the Roman empire.