Sumerian School Tablet

On a hot sunny day 3,700 years ago in the city of Nippur under the rule of the Hammurabi Dynasty (circa 1900-1600 B.C.E.), a young boy was learning to be a scribe. His classroom was most likely in a private home; his materials: a reed stylus and clay tablets. The lesson of the day was to practice writing thousand year old Sumerian cuneiform characters. Higher levels of Babylonian learning involved studying the Sumerian roots of their civilization, much like modern students study Greek and Latin. Literacy and knowledge were the tickets to a prosperous life as a scribe in the ever-growing government and religious bureaucracies. The day's lesson was routine, but important, practice in handwriting and vocabulary.

In the reign of Hammurabi when law and literature were celebrated with zeal, even the, then ancient, Sumerian heritage of the region was fully incorporated into the education of the empire's most promising students. These Babylonians spoke Akkadian and wrote in cuneiform on clay tablets. Akkadian and cuneiform continued to thrive for more than another thousand years under the Assyrians and the later Babylonian revival of Nebuchadnezzar. The use of Aramaic became wide-spread after the beginning of the first millennium and the Aramaean alphabet gradually replaced cuneiform.

The Sumerians created cuneiform script over 5000 years ago. It was the world's first written language. More than five spoken languages including Akkadian and Sumerian used cuneiform signs for written communication over the 3000 years during which they were in active use. The last known cuneiform inscription was written in 75 a.d.. It wasn't until the early 19th Century that scholars undertook serious decipherment of cuneiform text, and within sixty years a generally accepted system had been devised. In 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society asked four leading scholars to independently translate a recently excavated Assyrian text. The similarity of the results confirmed that they were on the right path. Cuneiform signs represent both spoken syllables and words which, when combined, create sentences.

Clay tablets were the primary media for everyday written communication and were used extensively in schools. Tablets were routinely recycled and if permanence was called for, they could be baked hard in a kiln. Many of tablets found by archæologists were preserved because they were baked when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept. Clay was an ideal writing material when paired with the reed stylus writing tool. The writer would make quick impressions in the soft clay using either the wedge or pointed end of the stylus. By adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. While many wedge positions are possible, awkward ones quickly fell from use in favor of those that were quickest and easiest to make. Like sloppy handwriting, badly made cuneiform signs would be illegible or misunderstood.

This type of school tablet is called a lentil or bun. The convex shape fits naturally into the palm of the hand. Look for the four lines on the front of the tablet (above). The teacher in ancient Nippur inscribed the signs in rows one and two (from the top edge). The student then took the soft tablet and copied the text into rows three and four. Our student was learning Sumerian signs that were already 1000 years old. The signs in row one were pronounced gi-gur which translates "reed basket." Row 2 reads gi-gur-da and that means a type of large reed basket. This lesson was both for handwriting and vocabulary.

If you look carefully at the right half of rows one and two, you'll notice small ridges impressed into the surface--you will need to either look at it at a shallow angle, or with a magnifying glass. These are probably the palm print of our long dead Babylonian student or teacher. On the back of the tablet you can see where our student practiced making a series of small closely placed wedges.

Form a lump of clay about the size of this tablet. Smooth one side flat. Your tablet should be thick enough to rest comfortably in your hand and not bend when pressure is applied to the top. Now, using a flat tipped stick (popsicle stick, spoon handle, etc.) try copying the cuneiform signs from the replica tablet onto your clay tablet. Without a wedge shaped tool, your marks will not match those of the Babylonians, but you will experience the challenge of writing in a language that was used by the people of Sumer, Babylon and Assyria for 3000 years. Notice how applying more pressure or changing the angle of your tool changes the size and shape of the impression. What happens if you make an impression too close to a previously made one? Imagine learning hundreds of signs and writing them quickly and accurately. Cuneiform was used for all official documents. Thousands government records, business transactions, as swell as, a rich literary tradition were all recorded in the very same fashion.

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