The most useful question about a famous “Enochian altar” image is what the camera actually photographed. Oxford identifies Dee’s painted wooden Holy Table as lost. The British Museum holds three engraved wax discs connected to the table tradition, while Oxford preserves a later marble version of the table’s design. These are different materials with different records. None of the three is a surviving complete table from Dee’s room.
- Lost
- Painted wooden tabletop
- Surviving group
- Three British Museum wax discs
- Later copy
- Oxford marble table
The large wax Sigillum
The British Museum catalogues a large engraved wax disc as 1838,1232.90.a. The record gives its diameter as 23.2 centimetres and describes figures and names cut into the wax. Its curator connects the object to the seal instructions recorded in Dee’s early conference manuscript and says its inscription closely resembles the drawn design. This is unusually strong material and textual comparison, yet the museum also says the objects are first securely documented by a visitor to the Cotton Library in 1692. A close match does not establish the day the wax was made. Calling it an associated engraved disc with the museum number communicates more than calling it unqualified “Dee’s original seal.”
The smaller supports
The same British Museum group includes two smaller engraved discs. The curator describes a proposed arrangement in which the table legs rested on smaller seals and a larger seal sat centrally beneath the viewing stone. Only two small discs are counted as surviving in this accession group. An illustration showing four supports can represent the reported design without proving that four physical supports remain. A modern recreated set may fill that gap with newly cast pieces; an object photograph does not. Counts matter because a casual description of “the five original seals” conflates the planned furnishing with the three preserved discs.
The stone is another evidence problem
Dee’s notes and later object catalogues refer to a show-stone, crystal, or mirror used for the conferences. Its role in a proposed table arrangement is described in the British Museum curator’s account of the wax discs. But a glass sphere or dark mirror pictured on a modern display is not automatically the exact object used with the engraved wax. The proposed arrangement and the ownership history of a particular stone are separate records. The stone belongs to the historical account of what Dee reported and how the wax discs were understood; an assembled display does not preserve a complete original set.
Four materials, four historical layers
A museum photograph of the wax disc shows surviving engraved wax. A photograph of Oxford’s object shows a seventeenth-century marble copy. The 1659 plate shows a printed line image. A diagram traced from Dee’s manuscript is a copy of a paper witness. None is the lost wooden Holy Table. Their collection numbers, materials, and date ranges reveal how the reported practice, surviving objects, printed design, and later display became connected over time. Oxford confirms that the painted wooden table is gone, while the British Museum places limits on the dating of the wax discs.
Sources and witness notes
- History of Science Museum · Holy Table, inv. 15449 ↗Museum account of the lost painted wooden original, the mid-seventeenth-century marble copy, and its relationship to the engraving published in 1659.
- British Museum · wax disc 1838,1232.90.a ↗Object record describing the large engraved wax disc, two smaller companions, the proposed table arrangement, and the limits of Dee-lifetime attribution.
- British Museum · associated wax-disc group ↗Companion object record for a smaller engraved wax disc; it is not an image of the wooden table.
- British Library · Sloane MS 3188 ↗Catalogue for Dee’s five books of conferences, 22 December 1581–30 May 1583. The volume is a manuscript witness, not the surviving table.
- Wikimedia Commons · Holy Table plate ↗The 1659 engraving is marked public domain. The local image is a reduced-size version already used by this site.