Schooldays in ancient Iraq

Round clay tablets like this are the remains of school life in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Around 1700 BC a young boy (girls rarely became scribes) wrote four short lines of what is perhaps a proverb. On the other side of the tablet is a model text that had been written by a more advanced scribe, perhaps his father, uncle or an older student.

Although such exercise tablets were never meant to last more than a short time, many thousands survive today. We can look over their shoulders and see what they had to do at school. First you learnt how to make a tablet and handle the stylus which made the wedge-shaped impressions in the clay. Next came the basic cuneiform signs, and then endless lists of words for different types of wood, sheep and other animals or materials. Finally the scribe practised writing sentences and longer texts.

The texts copied in school were the classics. There were hymns and myths, and texts praising kings past and present. This was a kind of citizenship training, teaching students the values they were expected to hold in their adult life. They also practised debating skills by taking the role of summer arguing against winter, or tree against reed.

Some texts seem to show us what school life was like, although apparently in caricatured form. They tell a sad tale of under-achievement, constant beatings, fierce rivalry, and often strong verbal abuse. A parent disappointed in their child’s progress invites the teacher for dinner, presents him with gifts, and all becomes well.

A student who finished school was a dubsar “scribe”. The best connected went on to become bureaucrats or priests. Merchants were also able to read and write, keeping records and writing letters. In fact recent research suggests that far more people could read and/or write to some extent than we used to think.