The Cotsen Collection at UCLA: 7 (2024-08-01)

Created by: Wolfe, Jared N.

This text from UCLA Library Special Collections records the first twenty lines of a Sumerian scribal composition known as Schooldays. The tale highlights the exaggerated remembrance of the trials and tribulations of higher learning in 19th century Babylonia.

This composition records the experiences of a young scribe describing to his interested father the tribulations of his day at school. In Sumer, scribes were called dub-sar, “tablet writer,” and the school was known as e2-dub-ba-a, literally “House where tablets are passed out.” The text begins with the student showing to his father his “homework,” a tablet with lines copied out, and asking to be woken early in order to avoid a caning by the headmaster for tardiness. The text then relates the failings of the young scribe, especially in scribal technique, for which he is caned several times (indeed, even this excerpt tablet appears to have found the disfavor of some stern instructor!). The scribe’s father then invites the headmaster to dinner and implores him not to give up on his son. The text ends with the young scribe rejoicing at the completion of scribal school, having become a learned man at this juncture; he thereupon praises Nidaba, the goddess of scribalism, for his success. The composition is meant to be humorous, and clearly was created by scribes recalling the tedium and intensity of scribal training. It is of interest that Nidaba’s blessing concerns a proper stylus and “good” copying skills. This points to one of the central tasks of the scribal school, the copying and preservation of lexical lists and literary compositions. It was through this method, accompanied by oral instruction, that students learned to write both Akkadian and Sumerian texts. This fragment contains the first twenty lines of the composition. The first six read    ‘Schoolboy, (where did you go?)’    ‘I went to school.’    ‘What did you do at school?’    ‘I read my tablet, ate my lunch.    I made my tablet, wrote it and finished it.’ CDLI entry: P388251

credit: Wolfe, Jared N.