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6.8: Writing-Boards

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    34207
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    Chance survivals can on rare occasions provide a glimpse of lost types of text-objects. Fragments of a wooden writing-board were found in a 14th-century bc shipwreck off the south coast of Turkey near Ulu Burun (Bass et al. 1989: 10–11; Payton 1991). It is of a type which, as is now clear, was in use from the Bronze Age to the Medieval period (see Brown 1994 on Medieval writing- boards). The Ulu Burun writing-board consists of two rectangular pieces of wood, the insides of which, apart from a border along the edges, had been hollowed out to allow them to be filled with wax. The two boards were joined by ivory hinges on one of the long sides and when closed could be fastened with string or leather thongs. Although the wax has not been preserved, it was probably coloured as seems to have been the case generally with ancient and medieval writing-boards (cf. Brown 1994: 7; Clanchy 1979: 91; Lalou 1992: 234; Small 1997: 146). Adding colour to the wax would have had a decorative function, but it would also have made the inscribed characters easier to read. Black was the most common colour, but red, yellow or green could also occur. An 8th-century bc wooden writing-board from Nimrud in Mesopotamia was found with some of its wax preserved. Analysis showed that it consisted of 25% orpiment, which would have given it a brilliant yellow colour (Mallowan 1954: 98–99). Orpiment, which was in common use as a pigment in Antiquity, was in fact found in an amphora on the Ulu Burun wreck (Bass 1986: 278–279; Bass et al. 1989: 10–11). The remains of two other wooden writing-boards from the Ulu Burun wreck have also been identified (Shear 1998: 187). Since the contents of the ship included goods and artefacts from different parts of the eastern Mediterranean, it is impossible to determine their provenance; they could be Syrian, Egyptian, Cypriote or Mycenaean (cf. Symington 1991: 112). There is ample textual evidence for the perhaps widespread use of wooden writing-boards in the Near East from the time of Ur III (Symington 1991: 111; MacGinnis 2002). As stressed by Nicholas Postgate, Wang Tao and Toby Wilkinson, the Ulu Burun writing-boards should be regarded as representatives of what may have been a large and important class of Bronze Age objects (Postgate et al. 1995: 478; cf. MacGinnis 2002: 227).

    Information on the specific uses of Near Eastern writing-boards relies on evidence from texts which sometimes mention the type of document on which specific information was recorded. The fact that no evidence of this type exists for the Aegean cannot be taken to preclude the idea that wooden writing-boards might have been used in similar ways. If wooden writing-boards were used in the Aegean in the Bronze Age, it is possible that they were used for different types of texts than those found on clay tablets. Since wooden writing-boards are lighter and stronger and therefore less cumbersome than clay tablets, it is possible to imagine that they were used for transporting information from one place to another. A wooden writing-board can be worn about the person (hanging from the belt vel sim.), and would therefore be suitable for quickly noting down information in passing, which could then later be transferred to a clay tablet or a papyrus document (cf. Brown 1994: 9; Clanchy 1979: 91–92 for this use of wooden writing-boards in the Medieval period). The wax surface used to write on could be easily wiped clean and reused. Wooden writing-boards may also have been used for writing of a more permanent character. In the Near East they were in some periods extensively used along with clay tablets for accounts and inventories of a permanent nature (MacGinnis 2002; Symington 1991: 118–123).

    Hinges from wooden writing-boards made of ivory or bronze (or fragments thereof) should be fairly easy to recognise in the archaeological record, but no certain examples from Minoan Crete or the Greek mainland have been published. Ione Mylonas Shear has suggested that seven bronze hinges with traces of burnt wood found with Linear B tablets at Knossos and twelve bronze hinges found with Linear A tablets in the Archive Room of the palace of Zakro might represent the remains of wooden writing-boards (Shear 1998; cf. Perna 2007). Seven bronze hinges were found along with clay tablets and sealings in the Archive Complex of the Palace at Pylos (Palaima 2003b: 181; Shear 1998). One of the hinges from Pylos preserved traces of carbonised wood. In both cases, the hinges have been identified as the remains of wooden boxes, used for storing clay tablets (Platon 1971: 151). However, as argued by Shear, it would seem more likely that they represent the remains of writing-boards as their size corresponds to that of the ivory hinges from the Ulu Burun writing-board. Hinges of the type used on the writing-board from the Ulu Burun wreck could have been made from wood just as well as from ivory. The hinging system on the Ulu Burun writing-board is quite elaborate, as well as being made of a prestigious material. It would therefore seem reasonable to assume that wooden writing-boards may have more commonly been hinged or tied together with string or leather cords. Massimo Perna’s objection that the fact that large numbers of bronze, bone or ivory hinges have not been found in archival contexts (or elsewhere) could be an indication that wooden writing-boards were not in common use in the Aegean area may therefore not be valid (Perna 2007: 226). Clay sealings may document the use of wooden writing-boards on Crete. In this regard, particular mention can be made of the balls of clay with seal impressions called two-hole hanging nodules which were used to fasten the two ends of a string together. They are believed to have been used to seal and / or label moveable commodities, although exactly what is uncertain (Hallager 1996: 36–37, 159–199; Krzyszkowska 2005: 21). Clay lumps called crescents with inscriptions in Cretan Hieroglyphic were also formed around string and are assumed to have sealed containers of some kind such as bags or boxes (Schoep 2004: 287). Alternatively, it would seem possible to suggest that the function of these types of sealings was to seal the string which tied the two parts of a wooden writing-board together. It may be relevant in this connection that the two-hole hanging nodules have been found with other archival docu- ments. Some of the clay crescents are inscribed with signs that can be identified with logograms signifying wine, grain and olives (Schoep 2004: 287). If they were used to seal wooden writing- boards, it would seem to imply that these were used for archival purposes.


    This page titled 6.8: Writing-Boards is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kathryn Piquette (Ubiquity Press) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.