Bloomberg boards

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Two Bloomberg boards

The Bloomberg boards are an archaeological find of 405 wooden writing boards , which were made during excavations under the Bloomberg building in the City of London between 2010 and 2014 . These are the remains of writing boards that were once coated with wax and on which there was a styluswas written. The tablets have been written on several times after the wax has been smoothed out again. Signs are only preserved on the wood if a scribe pressed hard and thus also notched the wood. Texts were still legible on about 80 boards. The tablets belong to the second half of the first century AD. The tablets were found in a soil that was constantly soaked with water, which has kept them going for 2000 years.

In many texts, only individual words or lines are preserved or legible. The texts have different contents. Often these are letters with business content. A contract dated January 8, 57 AD, making it the oldest financial document from London to date . Another contract is dated October 21, 62 AD and concerns the transport of 20 loads of food from Verulamium to Londinium and proves that the situation in the two places changed shortly after the Boudicca uprising (60/61 AD .) had largely normalized again. The text also provides the earliest evidence of the name London in a text. On one board there are only numbers, on another the alphabet is scratched. In both cases it could have been writing practice. A document dated October 22, 76 AD concerns a legal case. Another plaque is probably dated sometime after 85 AD. The date on the document is not clearly legible, but Emperor Domitian is mentioned in the year. It is the latest datable tablet.

In total, perhaps 129 people are named in the documents. However, it is not possible to give an exact number, since many names have been destroyed and in some cases it remains uncertain whether groups of characters represent a name. With certainty, however, 92 people are named, all of whom are male and two of whom were already known from other documents. They are the master brewer Domitius Tertius and the prefect Iulius Classicus , who led a cavalry unit ( Ala ) in the Batavian revolt in 70 AD . The master brewer Domitius Tertius is also documented on a writing board that was found in Carlisle .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tomlin: First Voices , 156-159
  2. ^ Tomlin: First Voices , 238-239
  3. ^ Tomlin: First Voices , 240–241
  4. ^ Tomlin: First Voices , 170–171
  5. ^ Tomlin: First Voices , 172-173
  6. ^ Tomlin: First Voices , 54
  7. ^ Tomlin: First Voices , 130-131
  8. ^ Tomlin: First Voices , 82-83

Web links

literature

  • Roger SO Tomlin: Roman London's first voices: writing tablets from the Bloomberg excavations, 2010-2014 (= Mola Monographs. Volume 72). MOLA, London 2016, ISBN 978-1-907586-40-8 .