Old School

There is old and there is old. The oldest schools in continuous operation are the Shishi High School, 143 BCE, in Chengdu, China and The King’s School, Canterbury, 597 CE, in Canterbury. Which is pretty impressive and I would like to check out the one in Kent at some point.

But I can’t miss the opportunity to go back even further in time to Sumeria (a part of Mesopotamia) where the schools (known as edubba, ‘House of Tablets’) trained the scribes of Mesopotamia in reading, writing, interpretation of texts, general knowledge, and the specifics of whatever field they would eventually work in. The Sumerian scribal school was operational by 2600 BCE and their curriculum continued by the other civilizations of Mesopotamia that followed.

map of Mesopotamia (between Euphates nd Tigris rivers)

How do we know that? The web site Brewminate states that ‘Based on information from tablets discovered in the ruins of the city of Nippur (primarily) and elsewhere, students entered school before the age of ten and graduated around twelve years later having mastered cuneiform script, Sumerian and Akkadian, and an array of subjects including agriculture, architectural design, astronomy, botany, engineering, history, literature, medicine, philosophy, religion, and zoology. They attended class from sunrise to sunset for at least 24 days a month (possibly year-round), and graduated in their early twenties as scribes.

A lot of student learning was done by writing out cuneiform compositions (‘school texts’) on clay tablets. A large number of tablets preserving scribal students' exercises (called ‘exercise tablets’) have been found and they come in different shapes and sizes, depending on the level of the student and on how advanced the assignment was.

The students were primarily boys, although female scribes are also known in Mesopotamian society. The eduba literature paints a vivid, if highly embellished, picture of daily life for young scribal students. According to these compositions, a boy would leave his parents' home in the morning, go to the eduba, and begin his lessons for the day. These included things like reciting texts learned previously and forming new tablets to inscribe.

Punishments for misbehaviour - talking out of turn, going out at the wrong time, writing poorly, etc. - could be harsh: in one exaggerated account, a student describes being beaten no less than seven times in a single day. After a day at school, the student would go home again to his parents, where he might tell them about the events of his day or recite homework assignments to them. Maybe not entirely accurately some scholars now think.

excavating Nippur

School was optional and was funded by the parents of the students through tuition. Only the children of the upper class and nobility could afford to attend. Daughters of nobles, merchants, or clergy were allowed to attend if they were going to follow in their parents’ profession. Slaves were also sometimes sent to school, especially those belonging to merchants or priests, so they could help with the scribal responsibilities of their masters.

Tablets had standard shapes and sizes which were mandated by the instructors and formed by the students. Students, therefore, had to create their own writing tablets and then learn how to inscribe them with hand-made implements.

A complete schoolroom would have had shelves on which completed work was laid out to dry, storage chests for miscellaneous school supplies and for the safekeeping of ‘textbooks’ They would also have had large ceramic vessels which held the damp clay that would be moulded into writing tablets and others filled with water into which old tablets were dropped to soften so they could be erased, reformed, and reused.

a Sumerian maths primer

The whole faculty was structured on the model of the family where the father was head of the household. The head of a Mesopotamian school, in fact, was known as the ‘Father of the Tablet House’ and corresponded to today’s school principal. Every other faculty member was an expert in his particular discipline, and older students, known as ‘big brothers’, served as teacher’s assistants in guiding younger learners.

Most of the information above comes from: World History Encyclopedia Joshua J. Mark, Brewminate, Psychology history books.

The first written records of The Epic of Gilgamesh date back to around 2100 BCE and students would have been copying the story but it would have been known in oral form which they would have learnt at school. Here is an excerpt (and I’ve cut a few lines to make sense):

“[Tell me] how you came to stand in the gods’ assembly and sought eternal life? Ut-napishtim spoke to him, to Gilgamesh,

“Let me reveal to you the secret of the gods. . . . [T]he gods . . . decided [to] make a flood. . . .
So he repeated their speech to a reed hut, x “Reed hut, reed hut, brick wall, brick wall: This is the message:

Man of Shuruppak, son of Ubara-Tutu,xi
Dismantle your house, build a boat.
Leave possessions, search out living things. Reject chattels and save lives.
Put aboard the seed of all living things, into the boat. The boat that you are to build shall have her dimensions in proportion, Her width and length shall be in harmony...

I realized and spoke to my master Ea,
“I have paid attention to the words that you spoke in this way, My master, and I shall act upon them. . . .
I loaded her with everything there was, Loaded her with all the silver,
Loaded her with all the gold
Loaded her with all the seed of living things, all of them. I put on board the boat all my kith and kin.
Put on board cattle from open country, wild beasts from open country, all kinds of craftsmen. . .
I saw the shape of the storm, The storm was terrifying to see.
I went aboard the boat and closed the door. . . . For six days and seven nights

Epic of Gilgamesh

From Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, trans. Stephanie Dalley. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1989)

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.