Wax writing board (Uluburun diptych)
Tablilla de madera encerada (díptico de Uluburun)
- Date
- c. 1310 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Uluburun, Kaş, Antalya, Turkey
- Credited to
- Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean merchants
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A walnut-wood diptych with ivory hinges and recesses for wax, found in a Late Bronze Age shipwreck. It is the oldest surviving reusable writing support.
The surviving object is the oldest; wax tablets may well have been used earlier. Homeric texts allude to 'folding tablets' centuries later.
What it led to
- wax tablets in Greece, Rome and throughout the Middle Ages for notes and accounts
- erasable, reusable writing for schooling and trade
- the form of the leaves-joined-by-a-spine book