The surprisingly simple method Assyrian scribes used to create clay tablets
The results of a study show that scribes did not always refine their clay, barely used fire to harden the texts, and that tablets made in the workshop coexisted with others brought from outside.
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There, inside an elite residence, a room was discovered containing more than 200 broken tablets, a large block of raw clay (one meter high, 1.9 wide, and 1.6 long), and what could be a tiny bronze stylus. The context, dated just before the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE, has been interpreted as a possible scriptorium or tablet-making workshop.
The research, led by Mathilde Jean (University of Paris Nanterre and the British Museum), analyzed in depth five of those tablets and the clay clod to answer three fundamental questions: whether all the tablets could have been made in that same workshop, which techniques the scribes used, and how to better interpret this archaeological space. The results, far from showing uniformity, reveal a surprising diversity of procedures and materials.
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