Eduba

The eduba was the institution that trained and educated young scribes in ancient Mesopotamia during the late third or early second millennium BCE.

Archaeological evidence for the Old Babylonian school system suggests that scribal education was small-scale and usually took place in private homes.

They date to the 17th century BCE (short chronology) (the early part of Samsu-iluna's reign), and the majority of them were students' school exercises.

[8] Another Old Babylonian home in which scribal training took place is the house of a man named Ur-Utu, located in the ancient city of Sippar-Amnanum.

[9] The modern idea of how the eduba functioned is based partially on descriptions from Sumerian literature (this is especially true of earlier scholarship - e.g., Sjöberg 1975,[10] Kramer 1949[11]).

These are sometimes referred to by modern scholars as "eduba literature"[12][13] (not to be confused with a second meaning of this term- any composition learned and copied by scribal students) or "school stories.

Several royal hymns, recounting the exploits of Mesopotamian kings, also make reference to the institution of the eduba; these include the compositions Šulgi B; Lipit-Ešter B; Išme-Dagan V; and Enlil-Bani A.

Archaeological evidence suggests that scribal training during the Old Babylonian took place in private houses, rather than large public institutions.

This has led some scholars to suggest that the content of "eduba literature" actually refers to an earlier institution, dating to the Ur III period.

Because Type I tablets tend to be very carefully written and contain long texts, it is assumed that they represent the work of relatively advanced students.

The left-hand column of the obverse contains a passage or "extract" from a school text (usually about 8-15 lines, but sometimes as long as 30) written in a neat hand, presumably by the teacher.

The reverse of a Type II tablet usually contains an excerpt of a different school text, one the student would have learned earlier in his education.

[27] Prisms are large clay objects with multiple faces (usually four to nine), pierced through the center from top to bottom with a hole.

[31] The curriculum for young students learning to write in edubas of the city of Nippur has been reconstructed from texts found at this site that date to the Old Babylonian period.

Each entry in this list comprised a few signs, or syllables, which sometimes resembled Sumerian words or personal names but actually contained little meaning.

Advanced eduba students memorized and wrote out Sumerian literary texts, beginning with the simple proverbs and progressing to much longer works.

In the transitional stage from elementary to advanced scribal training, students memorized and wrote out four literary compositions known as the "Tetrad".

[49] The House F Fourteen comprise the following:[50] Another group of texts that could be learned around the same stage of education as the Decad was a selection of letters from the Correspondence of the Kings of Ur.

[56][57] The eduba literature paints a vivid, if highly embellished, picture of daily life for young scribal students.

[61] These reports in the eduba literature provide entertaining, often sympathetic stories about what life was like for an Old Babylonian scribal student; however, they are idealized to a great extent, and their historical accuracy should not be assumed.