Development of writing, scribes (dubsars) and scribe schools (edubas) work together to alter the Ancient World in much the same way as the industrial revolutions rock the foundations of 19th century civilization.
This is a companion article to Scribes & Writing: Ancient Beginnings
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Mesopotamian scribe schools (edubas or 'tablet schools') first appear from c. 3000. They focus on practical matters such as business and numbers, functional precision of writing, accuracy, systems, lists, geometry, memorization and organization.
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Scribes might learn several languages which make them invaluable as translators. In many centers scribes don't pay taxes. They're involved in the complex details of administration as Mesopotamia ushers in the world's first bureaucracy.
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Many early scribes are priests and priestesses. The ziggurat is the house of a deity, sometimes called a Mountain House. It's forbidden for common people and even kings to enter the ziggurat. The royal family might have a private shrine nearby.
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Priests number among the 10% literate in ancient Mesopotamia. They possess the language of the gods, and the people do not understand the writings. The gap widens between the people and their deities.
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The ziggurat and surrounding temple complex are populated by scribal priests and priestesses, the only ones allowed atop the ziggurat. Musicians for the pleasure of the gods, cooks to make meals of the gods, divine launderers and servants work in select spaces.
Many are initiates into the priesthood. Although permitted into the ziggurat their access to certain areas may be restricted. Doctors are also known to practice from temples or a sacred complex. The work of doctors and priests often overlaps.
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The ability of priests to attain and constrain scribal knowledge further widens the gap between people and communication with their gods. The priest class grows in power. Most people depend on the priests for insight, oracles, rituals and exorcism.
This is also true of the Mesopotamian doctors, who work from temples or other spiritual environments in the temple complex. Doctors write prescriptions for treatment of ailments and expulsion of the demons causing the illness.
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Doctors and pharmacists are also among the literate few. The physician or pharmacist concocts the treatment and tells the patient what to do with it. The patient may not even know the ingredients of the medicine.
Medical knowledge is recorded by scribes, however, to become part of the many medicine texts of Sumer and Akkad. Sometimes the cause of illness is odd (toothache caused by an evil tooth worm) but treatment works (reciting an incantation and pulling the tooth).
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Early pharmaceutical clay tablets bear ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions, some in Sumerian cuneiform. Texts include medical formulas, instructions for pulverization, infusion, boiling, filtering and spreading the components. Various herbs are described.
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A site in ancient Babylon provides the earliest evidence of an apothecary or pharmacy. Alongside the patient, the doctors include a priest, physician, and a pharmacist to define and treat the ailment(s).
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A scribe might work in a religious capacity or secular, in administration, law and records-keeping. Scribes regularly write music or draw up blueprints. The scribe makes written records of speeches, victories, songs, prayers, prescriptions, incantations and god lists.
Calligraphy doesn't appear until much later. During the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) of China it was required education for nobles. Literature of the Mesopotamian scribe schools gives insight into daily life for young scribal students. Typically training starts in childhood.
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Compositions describe how a boy would leave his parents' home in the morning, go to the eduba, and begin lessons for the day. These include reciting texts learned previously and forming new tablets to inscribe. Scribe schools are regularly held in private houses.
Punishment for misbehavior such as talking out of turn, going out at the wrong time or poor writing style can be harsh. In one account, a student claims to be beaten seven times in a day. Students commonly use bribery or flattery to avoid a beating.
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After a day at school, the student goes home again to his parents. He might tell them about his day or explain his homework assignments.
Such reports in the eduba literature are entertaining, often sympathetic stories about life or an Old Babylonian scribal student. They may be fictionalized or exaggerated by the teller.
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Merchants also make enthusiastic use of writing. It is after all their invention. The first trade records are created by placing an identifying token into a sealed clay sphere. The token indicates the type and number of goods delivered to the buyer.
The letter below covers all available space on a clay cushion shaped tablet. Shown are the obverse, reverse and all four sides of the letter. It's written in Akkadian, language of trade and commerce in lands of Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Levant and even Egypt.
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After writing a missive, the person places the clay tablet in the sun. Once dry, the tablet is delivered to its recipient by someone going that way. The idea of a postal service has yet to take form.
The letter above is from a merchant in one city advising a less experienced merchant, who is in the busy trade town Kanesh. The letter details the trade of precious metals. It also warns, "This is important; no dishonest man must cheat you! So do not succumb to drink!"
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Firing the inscribed clay tablets becomes a widespread practice as it hardens clay better than air-drying. Humans have been firing clay since c. 29,000 BCE. In the ruined city Ebla archaeologists discover over 20,000 preserved clay tablets 'fired' by the burning of the town.
Firing alters the structure of the clay. The clay particles bond together and make the material stronger. This is desirable in a more permanent ware. Higher firing temperature can make clay impervious to water as in stoneware pottery.
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Unfired or sun-dried clay can be moistened, wiped clean and used again. Soaked, it soon returns to its moldable damp earth state, which fired clay cannot do, due to the transmutation of elements.
Although clay is the medium of choice, scribes experiment with papyrus, parchment, tools and custom writing tablets. Scribal students copy such literary works as the Epic of Gilgamesh (written or collected c. 2150 - 1400 BCE).
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Nearly all known Sumerian literary works come from apprentice or student scribes. Besides writings of literature and entertainment, texts include lists of words, grammar forms, name lists and personal names.
Scribes learn and copy syllabaries, sets of written letters representing syllables. The curriculum in scribal schools starts with a study of lists and syllabaries.
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EVOLUTION OF EARLY WRITING
Traveling scribes play a vital part in the spread of literary works, poems, songs, religious or secular music and ritual writings. Copying epics such as that of Gilgamesh or the tale of Telipinu are also part of the curriculum.
Toward the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, disputations are popular in Sumerian literature. These include the Debate between Bird and Fish; the Debate between Summer and Winter, in which Winter wins.
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Other debates include those between cattle and grain, tree and reed, silver and copper, the pickaxe and the plow, and the millstone and the gul-gul stone. Stories, accounting and religious texts found their way into the scribe schools and preserved as copies.
Metrology or the science of measurement is part of the scribal curriculum, as are formulas for writing legal contracts, common sayings or proverbs. Students then advance to the structures of praise poems.
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Eventually they evolve to copying or inscribing more complex literary works. Apart from mathematics, a discipline involving years of study for a scribe, the Babylonian scribal education concentrated on learning to write Sumerian and Akkadian using cuneiform.
A large part of scribal training involves learning conventions for the writing of letters, contracts and accounts. Scribes learn through a variety of media, such as listening to spoken language and writing the syllable sounds / words / symbols.
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Ability to memorize glyphs, forms and styles is paramount. In the beginning scribes are under the patronage of the Sumerian goddess Nisaba.
Her symbols include a tablet of lapis lazuli and golden stylus. Apart from literature and writing she is a goddess of grain, accounting and surveying. As time goes on her place is taken by the god Nabu.
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