IOUs, a note to a brewer, and the earliest handwritten document known from Britain — these are among the 405, nearly 2,000-year-old Roman waxed writing tablets archaeologists have unearthed and ...

Fragment of a Neo-Assyrian tablet preserving wax, in the British Museum. (The Trustees of the British Museum) The writing boards excavated from Nimrud (modern Iraq) represent the first material ...

Scholars Finally Decode 'Unreadable' Ancient Roman Tablets That No One Was Supposed to See ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Roman officials in modern-day Belgium once tossed old wooden frames used for wax writing tablets into a well to make sure nobody could read what was ...

Wax tablets were among the oldest writing media, and scientists have recently uncovered the secrets of their technology. In Ancient Rome, if you needed to write a letter, you wouldn't reach for ...

Molten wax was applied to tablets using a spatula (right), and a decorated stylus (left) was used to inscribe text in it.(Courtesy © MOLA) The largest and most ...

Katy has a BA in Humanities and Philosophy, with over 20 years of experience in online and print publishing. She was named the Association of British Science Writers' Editor of the Year in 2023. Katy ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Experts have deciphered writings etched on two batches of ancient Roman wooden wax tablets that were previously unreadable. The tablets were tossed ...