Scholar Jeremy Black (among others) has pointed out that students used to copy this piece as part of their exercises and it is possible, even likely, considering this work was part of the curriculum for older students, that it was intended as a light-hearted parody of a teacher’s lecture. 2000-1600 BCE) and, although originally interpreted as an accurate depiction of the life of a scribe, might also be understood as satire. The piece is dated to the Old Babylonian Period (c. The piece would have been copied toward the end of the twelve years of instruction.Ī Supervisor’s Advice to a Young Scribe is a Sumerian composition relating a dialogue between an elder scribe and a young graduate from his school. Photo by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, The Sulaymaniyah Museum, Wikimedia Commons The original statue was made of diorite and probably came from Tell Telloh (Girsu), Iraq, c.2600 BCE. Ancient scribes had a lot of practice.Gypsum replica of the statue of Sumerian scribe Dudu. Now it's your turn to try making pictographs and cuneiform words.
#Scribe mesopotamia pdf#
Download the Cookie Recipe PDF for ingredients, directions, and equipment. Cuneiform: wooden chopstick or square dowel. Some became important officials in the royal court. Good scribes studied for many years, learning hundreds of signs. At first, they practiced pressing single wedges: vertical, horizontal, and diagonal, then graduated to grouping them into signs signifying syllables and words. This chart (at right) provides a simplified illustration drawn from different cultures.Īncient scribes started to learn to write as children, possibly as young as seven years old. Cuneiform went through many changes across time. These wedges were easy and efficient and, eventually, the writing system became more abstract. Finally, scribes began to press wedge shapes into clay using the triangular top corner of a cut reed. These objects evolved into word pictures (pictographs) drawn on clay tablets. Over time, scribes also wrote with other tools on stone, bronze, and organic materials.īefore inventing cuneiform, Mesopotamians made tiny clay objects to record and count things. It was used for thousands of years to communicate multiple languages.Ĭuneiform was originally designed with available materials in mind: clay for tablets and reeds for writing tools. Ancient history never tasted so good!Ĭuneiform (cyu-nay-i-form) meaning " wedge-shaped," is a writing system invented around 3000 BC by the Sumerian people in ancient Mesopotamia (roughly, modern Iraq). Follow our simple recipe and practice basic pictographs and cuneiform words to create your own tasty tablets in this family friendly activity. But instead of writing on a traditional clay tablet, you get to practice cuneiform on a cookie tablet. Imagine you are a young Mesopotamian scribe about to uncover the mysteries of cuneiform, the earliest known writing system. British Museum ME118882 photo by Greta Van Buylaere Relief decoration from Tiglath-Pilesar III's Central Palace at Nimrud, about 728 BC. 
An Assyrian scribe with a stylus and clay tablet,
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