Bloomberg tablets

The tablets are the earliest written documents found in Britain, dating from 50 to 80 AD in the early Roman period.

The Bloomberg tablets were an unexpected find, as organic material such as wood and leather tends to rot away and disintegrate with time.

A typical tablet would have been made of a thin piece of wood, 15–25 cm wide, with a rectangular depression carved into the centre.

To make the digital recreation of the writing, photographs were taken using different angles of light and thus casting different shadows upon the tablet surface.

[6] This is the highest number of translated artefacts from any comparable archaeological site in London, surpassing the previous record of 19.

[7] Tablets vary in content, including the oldest financial document from London (dating to 8 January 57 AD),[7] about 3 to 4 years before the city was destroyed by Boudica.

Additionally, among the tablets there are over 100 names of people of all different professions and social classes who lived in London at the time, such as slaves, merchants, soldiers, and politicians.

[4] Although current technology and methods have allowed for recreation and translation of many tablets, the vast majority of them remain illegible.

[7] While some of the tablets are being preserved for future study, some will be displayed in a museum exhibit entitled "London Mithraeum" located on the first two floors of the Bloomberg European Headquarters, which opened in November 2017.