In our article When the emperor Hadrian destroyed the longest bridge in the world, we tell how this bridge was ordered to be built by Trajan in the year 103 AD. over the Danube River, to serve as a crossing and supply for the troops in the imminent Second Dacian War against Decebalus.
The bridge was the most prominent and showy element of the road that the legions built to make their way to Dacia, and when this road was completed Trajan ordered the placement of a commemorative inscription.
Thus, in that same year 103 AD, on a rock wall at the Iron Gates, the Latin inscription that we know today as Tabula Traiana was engraved. or Table of Trajan. It was located on the Serbian shore of the Iron Gates, the last part of the gorge formed by the Danube that today forms the border between Romania and Serbia, just after the Romanian city of Orsova.
It is a large tombstone carved into the rock, 3.20 meters wide and 1.80 meters high, on which two winged dolphins, six-petal roses and an eagle with outstretched wings are represented. The inscription, whose last lines are practically erased by erosion as is the kneeling bearded man depicted at the bottom, read in 6 lines of Roman capital letters:
IMP CAESAR DIVI NERVAE F / NERVA TRAIANVS AUG GERM / PONTIF MAXIMVS TRIB POT IIII / PATER PATRIAE COS III / MONTIBVS EXCISI. ANCO..BVS / SVBLATIS VIA .E.
(Emperor Caesar, son of the divine Nerva, Nerva Trajan Augustus, conqueror of the Germans, Maximus Pontiff, invested four times with the power of tribune, Father of the country, consul for the third time, has dug up the mountains and embedded the beams to make this way)
The upper inscription TABULA TRAIANA was added in 1891, when the Serbian government first took steps to protect the slab.
Between 1969 and 1972, the construction of a dam at the Iron Gates buried numerous ancient sites under water, as well as several Roman commemorative inscriptions similar to that of Trajan.
The Tabula Traiana It was saved because the entire block of rock in which it is inscribed was cut, a mass of about 300 tons, and it was embedded 50 meters higher to prevent it from being covered by the waters.
Today it is located within the Djerdap National Park, about 2.5 kilometers upriver from the town of Tejika and close to that of Kladovo. It is only visible from the water, since due to the configuration of the coast where it is located, there is no other way to access it.
On the opposite bank of the river, on the Romanian side, is the statue of the Dacian leader Decebalus, considered the tallest rock sculpture in Europe.