Laguna Copperplate Inscription

Date

21 April 900 CE

Category

Culture, arts & philosophy

Region

Southeast Asia (Luzon, Philippines)

Era

Post-Classical / Medieval

Significance

Dated to Saka year 822, corresponding to 21 April 900 CE, the Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the earliest known calendar-dated written document found in the Philippines.

Inscribed on a thin copper plate in the Kawi (Old Javanese) script using a language blending Old Malay with Sanskrit, Old Javanese, and Old Tagalog elements, it records the formal acquittal of a debt of gold owed by a nobleman named Namwaran and his family, issued by officials connected to the polity of Tondo. The text names several settlements in the Manila Bay and Central Luzon region (Tundun/Tondo, Pailah, Puliran, Binuangan) and references the Medang Kingdom of Java, demonstrating that early Philippine societies possessed literacy, standardised weights and measures, a structured legal and political order, and active maritime links across Southeast Asia. Discovered in 1987 near the Lumbang River in Laguna province and deciphered by Dutch scholar Antoon Postma in 1992, the artifact pushed the documented history of the archipelago back more than six centuries before Spanish contact and overturned earlier assumptions of pre-Hispanic cultural isolation. It is now held at the National Museum of Anthropology in Manila.

Empires active in 21 April 900 CE

• Byzantine Empire
  330 CE – 1453 CE
• Samanid Empire
  819 CE – 999 CE
• Abbasid Caliphate
  750 CE – 1258 CE
• Tang Dynasty
  618 CE – 907 CE
• Kanem-Bornu Empire
  700 CE – 1900 CE
• Caliphate of Córdoba
  756 CE – 1031 CE

Related culture, arts & philosophy events

• House of Wisdom and the Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement under al-Ma'mun
  c. 830 CE
• Igbo-Ukwu Bronze Florescence and West African Long-Distance Trade
  c. 850 CE
• Rajaraja Chola completes the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur
  1003–1010 CE
• Murasaki Shikibu completes The Tale of Genji
  c. 1008–1021 CE
• Ferdowsi completes the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings
  8 March 1010 CE
• The Carolingian Renaissance revives classical learning
  c. 787–820 CE

Further reading

The Story of Art

The wider story

The Story of Art

E. H. Gombrich

The best-selling art history ever written, from cave paintings to the modern age.

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