Education

The first-known formal schools were in ancient Mesopotamia. It is uncertain exactly when they first appeared, but lists of vocabulary words obviously intended for students were found in the ruins of the Sumerian city of Uruk and date from roughly 3000 b. c. More abundant evidence comes from the period of 2500 to 1500 B. C., including hundreds of cuneiform tablets that were used for classroom and homework exercises. These and/or sometimes the remains of actual schoolhouses have been found not only in Uruk but also in Nippur, Ur, Mari, and elsewhere in and around Mesopotamia. Such a school, called an edubba, or “tablet house” after the clay tablets used by the students, was at first located on the grounds of a temple, but later it was common to set up schools in private buildings. A private school excavated at Mari had two rooms, one containing mud-brick benches, each of which accommodated two to four students. Scholars believe that the walls, which are now largely missing, featured wide shelves on which to stack the students’ exercise tablets. In addition to such tablets, the children may also have used wooden writing boards like those used by Egyptian children. These boards were covered with wax; a student used a pointed stick to inscribe letters in the wax and later smoothed out the wax to create a fresh surface.

All schools in Mesopotamia were privately run and paid for by students’ parents, so only the well-to-do could afford to send their children to a formal school. Thus, the vast majority of people were illiterate. In the mid-twentieth century, a scholar from Luxembourg, Nikolaus Schneider, examined a large collection of economic and administrative tablets dating from circa 2000 b. c. and found that most of the scribes who created these documents also added the names and occupations of their fathers. The fathers were invariably governors, mayors, military officers, priests, high tax officials, temple administrators, scribes, and so forth. Schneider’s study showed not only that education was a privilege of the well-to-do but also that most students were male. only one woman was listed as a scribe in all the documents he examined. As was the case in other ancient societies, it was not seen as necessary to educate girls since nearly all major positions in government and business were held by men.

As for the actual running of a Mesopotamian school, the school day lasted from early morning to sundown. It appears that schools were open on twenty-four days of each month, the other days being devoted to religious holidays or vacation. The headmaster was called the ummia (“school father”), a scribe who commanded great respect in society because he had attained a high level of learning. One surviving tablet contains a passage in which a student tells his headmaster, “You have opened my eyes as though I were a puppy. You have formed humanity within me.” The teachers who worked under the ummia were also scribes. They specialized in various intellectual disciplines, as modern high school and college instructors still do. There was a “scribe of counting,” who taught arithmetic, for instance; and a “scribe of Sumerian,” who taught students how to read and write that language. Later, after Akkadian came to be used widely across Mesopotamia, students were required to learn both Sumerian and Akkadian. Not all students became totally literate because early forms of cuneiform were tremendously complex and difficult to master; but it was probably expected that average students would become literate enough to write simple letters, read military dispatches, compute taxes, and read some standard prayers and poems, including the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. The best and most diligent students, however, went on to become scribes, including teachers, government administrators, astrologers, and priests. The main method of teaching was rote—constant repetition, both by writing and reciting the lessons. The teachers also showed the students how to fashion and bake the clay tablets used in the classroom.

The teachers and the ummia were both respected and feared because proper behavior in the schools was strictly enforced, when necessary by the use of corporal punishment. A surviving essay, titled “Schooldays,” written in about 2000 b. c. by a teacher recalling his own youthful education, tells how the boy’s mother gave him his lunch and sent him off to school. But unfortunately for him, he was late. “Afraid and with pounding heart,” the boy stood before the headmaster and “made a respectful curtsy,” after which the teacher beat him severely with a stick. “My headmaster read my tablet,” the text goes on,

And said: “There is something missing,” [and then he] beat me. The fellow in charge of neatness said: “You loitered in the street and did not straighten up your clothes,” [and he also] beat me. The fellow in charge of silence said: “Why did you talk without permission?” [and he also] beat me.

The beatings continued for some time. Finally, the boy convinced his father to pay the headmaster more money and to invite him over for dinner, after which the ummia stopped using physical means to discipline the boy.

See Also: cuneiform; literature; priests and priestesses; scribe; writing materials