Discover the Babylonian Curriculum from Lexical Lists to Literature

The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

Thursdays, November October 12–November 9, 2023, 5-7 pm Central (Chicago) Time, Live on Zoom and Recorded. Non-Members: $245, Members: $196, ISAC docents/volunteers/trip: $98, UChicago/Lab/Charter School students, staff, and faculty: $61 Not yet a member? Become a member today and save! <a href="https://isac.uchicago.edu/Join%20and%20Give/friends-isac" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://isac.uchicago.edu/Join%20and%20Give/friends-isac </a>or add on a membership when you register for this class1740 BCE in the Babylonian city of Nippur, young pupils learned to read and write the complex cuneiform script, while more advanced students studied topics like mathematics, religion, and law. The goal of their education was to gain the knowledge, skills, and character traits necessary to become successful scribes.Class One (October 12, 2023): Aims of Babylonian Education (Susanne Paulus, PhD, Associate Professor of Assyriology)In the first class, we will set the foundation for the following weeks discovering a school in Nippur and its students learning more about their social background. You will gain an overview of the curriculum and pedagogical methods of ancient teachers. Then we explore questions of literacy and professional training asking about the aims of Babylonian education.Class Two (October 19, 2023): Lexical lists in the School Curriculum (Marta Díaz Herrera, NELC PhD candidate)Lexical lists are among the oldest cuneiform texts found in Mesopotamia and the earliest scholarly texts attested in human history. In the Old Babylonian period, these texts became an essential tool for the training of scribal students. As a result, in this period, new lexical lists were created and copies of them are found in more school tablets than ever before—in what has been called the “Old Babylonian Writing Revolution.” In this class, we will explore the various lexical lists that were used at House F, from the beginning of cuneiform training to the end of the first phase of the scribal curriculum. We will also discuss the lists’ function as pedagogical tools, used to introduce students to both the Sumerian language and the large repertoire of cuneiform signs at their disposal, and as vehicles of scholarly expression. Class Three (October 26, 2023): Literature within the Babylonian curriculum (Jane Gordon, NELC PhD student)In this particular session of the course, we will look at the range of literary texts that scribal students studied in the advanced stage of their education. What was this literature like, what topics, images, and ideals did these texts explore, and what might have been their pedagogical purpose (or purposes) in the training of future scribes? We will also reflect a bit more broadly on the particular ability of literature to instruct, delight, persuade, or transform the people who encounter it.Class Four: (November 2, 2023): Mathematics (Barbora Wichterlová, NELC PhD candidate)Babylonian scribes reached various levels of numeracy during their mathematical practice, which constituted a part of the rich tradition of ancient Mesopotamian mathematics. This class will explore how mathematics was taught at House F at Nippur and beyond, in terms of both topics covered and pedagogical strategies employed.Class Five (November 9, 2023): Between Texts and Archaeology (Madeline Ouimet, NELC PhD student and Assistant Curator of the ISAC Tablet Collection)In this class session, we will approach Old Babylonian scribal school through an interdisciplinary perspective, combining texts and archaeology. We will consider cuneiform tablets as not only texts but material artifacts in their own right and explore how we can use the non-textual features of these tablets to uncover the experiences - even emotions - of ancient students. We will discover that the Babylonian curriculum did not only include a particular set of vocabulary lists and literary pieces for students to learn but also the physical skills required for the crafting of meaning out of formerly formless clay. We will also explore the physical context of the school in Nippur, including what the findspots of tablets, pottery, figurines, and more can tell us about students' daily routines and how they engaged with the world of clay within which they lived -- 3700 years ago.

Biographies of instructors: Susanne Paulus is an Associate Professor of Assyriology at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures – West Asia and North Africa at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the social, legal, and economic history of Babylonia. As Curator of the ISAC Tablet Collection and head of the Nippur Tablet Project, together with the team of the Tablet Collection, she serves as curator for Back to School in Babylonia.Marta Díaz Herrera is a PhD candidate in Cuneiform Studies and Linguistics at the University of Chicago. Her research currently focuses on language contact between Sumerian and Akkadian and the reconstruction of the sociolinguistic history of third-millennium Mesopotamia. She is the Assistant Curator of the Nippur Tablet Project at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago and a member of the curatorial team for Back to School in Babylonia.Jane Gordon is a PhD student in Assyriology and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. She studies ancient Babylonian literature, with a particular emphasis on narrative form and questions of perspective, voice, and time.Barbora Wichterlová is a PhD candidate in Cuneiform Studies and Comparative Semitics at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation is a linguistic analysis of numbers in Semitic languages and Sumerian. Relatedly, she is interested in cuneiform mathematics and contributed to the mathematical sections of Back to School in Babylonia.Madeline Ouimet is a PhD student in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology and Cuneiform Studies at the University of Chicago. She focuses on the study of sensory experience, materiality, and daily social life in ancient Mesopotamia by intersecting texts and archaeology. She is Assistant Curator of the ISAC Tablet Collection and part of the curatorial team for Back to School in Babylonia.