What type of tablet does the Statue of Liberty hold?

What type of tablet does the Statue of Liberty hold? A tabula ansata.

The Statue of Liberty holds a tabula ansata, an ancient tablet form with a distinctive handle-like extension on each side. The tablet is inscribed “JULY IV MDCCLXXVI,” the Roman-numeral date for July 4, 1776, when the United States Declaration of Independence was adopted.

The tablet is in the figure’s left hand, while her raised right hand carries a torch. Its design draws on classical artistic traditions and reinforces the statue’s theme of law, liberty, and republican ideals. It is not a codex, which is a bound collection of pages, nor a stele, a usually upright stone monument or inscribed slab.

The tablet’s date is sometimes mistaken for the statue’s completion date. The sculpture was dedicated more than a century later, on October 28, 1886. The Roman numerals therefore refer to American independence, not the unveiling of the monument. The statue was designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, with its internal framework engineered by Gustave Eiffel.