Proverbs

In the eighteenth-century city of Nibru, proverbs comprised the final stage of elementary scribal education. Some collections were widely copied: one, now known as Collection 2+6, is over 300 lines long and is attested on over 150 different tablets. Some of those tablets are small and round with only one two - or three-line proverb written in good handwriting on the front (presumably by a teacher or advanced student) and again on the back rather more clumsily, presumably by a pupil who was learning it for the first time. Another, much larger standard tablet type typically bears 10—20 lines (5—10 proverbs) on the rectangular obverse, again in two copies: the model to be copied on the left, and the student’s attempt(s) to replicate it on the right. On the back of such tablets the student typically copied out a much longer extract from an earlier exercise or from an earlier part of the proverb collection. The third type of tablet is typically a rather smaller rectangle, bearing the student’s copy alone of a similar-sized extract—5 to 10 proverbs. Finally, there are large multi-columned tablets containing the whole of a collection, or significant fractions of it, which students appear to have written out on completing that stage of their education. The entries in the collections are typically separated by a double horizontal line.

Much less is understood about the typology and functions of similar tablets from other cities, such as Unug, Susa, and Urim. Collection 25 is

Known from just two sources, one of which is perhaps from Larsa. In common with other Sumerian proverb collections, it also contains small fables and parables (1, 4). Some take the theme of ‘palaces’, the employing agency for many scribes (8—12), while others may be paradoxes (1—5, 7), but the meanings of many remain obscured in cultural and linguistic difficulties.