An eduba (Wolfe, Jared. The Cotsen Collection at UCLA: 7 (2024-08-01) ) is a scribal school for the Sumerian language. The eduba was the institution that trained and educated young scribes in ancient Mesopotamia during the late third or early second millennium BCE.Sjöberg, Åke. 1975. "The Old Babylonian Eduba" in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on His Seventieth Birthday, June 7, 1974, edited by S. J. Lieberman, Assyriological Studies 20, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 159-179. pp. 159-160. Most of the information known about edubas comes from cuneiform texts dating to the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE).
Archaeological evidence Archaeological evidence for the Old Babylonian school system suggests that scribal education was small-scale and usually took place in private homes.George, A. R. 2005. "In Search of the e2.dub.ba.a: the ancient Mesopotamian school in literature and reality." In An Experienced Scribe Who Neglects Nothing: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Jacob Klein. Edited by Y. Sefati, P. Artzi, C. Cohen, B.L. Eichler, and V. Hurowitz, CDL Press, 127-137. p. 130. School tablets have been found in private residences in many sites across Mesopotamia. Some houses, where particularly large numbers of school tablets were unearthed, have been interpreted by archaeologists as "school houses" or homes in which scribal education almost certainly took place. The best example of this is House F in the city of Nippur. Nearly one and a half thousand fragments of tablets were found at this house. They date to the 17th century BCE (short chronology) (the early part of Samsu-iluna's reign), and the majority of them were students' school exercises.Robson, Eleanor. 2001. "The Tablet House: A Scribal School in Old Babylonian Nippur." Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale 95: 39-66. p. 40. Two other possible "school houses" are located at the site of Ur. The first is a house called No. 7 Quiet Street, where a smaller number of school texts was found in situ and date to the late 18th or early 17th century BCE (short chronology) (reigns of Rim-Sin II or as late as Samsu-iluna year 11Delnero, Paul. 2012. The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. p.64.). The second is a house called No. 1 Broad Street, where a larger number of school tablets was discovered.George, A. R. 2005. "In Search of the e2.dub.ba.a: the ancient Mesopotamian school in literature and reality." In An Experienced Scribe Who Neglects Nothing: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Jacob Klein. Edited by Y. Sefati, P. Artzi, C. Cohen, B.L. Eichler, and V. Hurowitz, CDL Press, 127-137. pp. 130-131. Some texts from No. 1 Broad Street may date to as late as Samsu-iluna year 11 (1674 BCE short chronology, 1738 middle chronology).Delnero, Paul. 2012. The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. p.65. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether this house is the school texts' original place of use.Delnero, Paul. 2012. The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. pp. 65-66. Another Old Babylonian home in which scribal training took place is the house of a man named Ur-Utu, located in the ancient city of Sippar-Amnanum.Delnero, Paul. 2012. The Textual Criticism of Sumerian Literature. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research. p.78.
Texts about the eduba The modern idea of how the eduba functioned is based partially on descriptions from Sumerian literature (this is especially true of earlier scholarship - e.g., Sjöberg 1975,Sjöberg, Åke. 1975. "The Old Babylonian Eduba" in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on His Seventieth Birthday, June 7, 1974, edited by S. J. Lieberman, Assyriological Studies 20, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 159-179. pp. 161. Kramer 1949Kramer, Samuel Noah. 1949. "Schooldays- A Sumerian Composition Relating to the Education of a Scribe." Journal of the American Oriental Society 69: 199-215.). A number of stories are set in the scribal school or attest to what life was like as a scribal student. These are sometimes referred to by modern scholars as "eduba literature"catalogue of scribal training literature.George, A. R. 2005. "In Search of the e2.dub.ba.a: the ancient Mesopotamian school in literature and reality." In An Experienced Scribe Who Neglects Nothing: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Jacob Klein. Edited by Y. Sefati, P. Artzi, C. Cohen, B.L. Eichler, and V. Hurowitz, CDL Press, 127-137. p. 127. (not to be confused with a second meaning of this term- any composition learned and copied by scribal students) or "school stories."Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Groningen. p. 5. They include the compositions "Schooldays" (Eduba A); "A Scribe and his Perverse Son" (Eduba B); "The Advice of a Supervisor to a Younger Scribe" (Eduba C); "Scribal Activities"(Eduba D); "Instructions of the Ummia" (Eduba E); and "Regulations of the E-duba" (Eduba R). A few Sumerian dialogues also touch on elements of student life, including "A Dialogue Between Two Scribes" (Dialogue 1); "A dialogue between Enki-hengal and Enkita-lu" (Dialogue 2); and Enki-manshum and Girini-isag (Dialogue 3). Several royal hymns, recounting the exploits of Mesopotamian kings, also make reference to the institution of the eduba; these include the compositions Šulgi B; Lipit-Ešter B; Išme-Dagan V; and Enlil-Bani A.Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Groningen. p. 24. Several Old Babylonian lettersSjöberg, Åke. 1975. "The Old Babylonian Eduba" in Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on His Seventieth Birthday, June 7, 1974, edited by S. J. Lieberman, Assyriological Studies 20, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 159-179. pp. 161. and proverbsDelnero, Paul. 2006. Variation in Sumerian Literary Compositions: A Case Study Based on the Decad. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. p. 65. also allude to scribal education or the eduba.
The historical accuracy of eduba literature and other texts referring to the eduba - the extent to which they describe the reality of Old Babylonian scribal education - has been called into question in more recent scholarship. Archaeological evidence suggests that scribal training during the Old Babylonian took place in private houses, rather than large public institutions. This has led some scholars to suggest that the content of "eduba literature" actually refers to an earlier institution, dating to the Ur III period.George, A. R. 2005. "In Search of the e2.dub.ba.a: the ancient Mesopotamian school in literature and reality." In An Experienced Scribe Who Neglects Nothing: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Jacob Klein. Edited by Y. Sefati, P. Artzi, C. Cohen, B.L. Eichler, and V. Hurowitz, CDL Press, 127-137. p. 132. Others maintain simply that the literary accounts are exaggerated or anachronistic, or that they reflect an idealized image of the school system.Cohen, Yoran and Sivan Kedar. 2011. "Teacher-Student Relationships: Two Case Studies." In The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, edited by Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 229-247. p. 230Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Groningen. p.25.
Tablets bearing student exercises A lot of student learning was done by writing out cuneiform compositions ("school texts") on clay tablets. A large number of tablets preserving scribal students' exercises (called "exercise tablets") have been found at sites throughout the Near East. These come in different shapes and sizes, depending on the level of the student and on how advanced the assignment was. The following is a typology of tablet shapes developed by modern scholars, based primarily on tablets from the Old Babylonian city of Nippur. The extent to which the same typology applies to exercise tablets from other cities in which scribes were being trained is not yet clear.
Type I Type I tablets are multi-column tablets usually containing several hundred lines of a composition written out by a student in two or more columns. These tablets are often large enough to accommodate an entire composition and sometimes even contain parts of multiple compositions. In cases where a whole composition does not fit on a single tablet, it may be spread out across multiple tablets.
Because Type I tablets tend to be very carefully written and contain long texts, it is assumed that they represent the work of relatively advanced students.Robson, Eleanor. 2001. "The Tablet House: A Scribal School in Old Babylonian Nippur." Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale 95: 39-66. p. 46.Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Groningen. pp. 28-31.
Type II Type II tablets are formatted with two or more columns on the obverse (the front of the tablet), and multiple columns of a (usually) different text on the reverse (the back of the tablet). The left-hand column of the obverse contains a passage or "extract" from a school text (usually about 8-15 lines, but sometimes as long as 30) written in a neat hand, presumably by the teacher. The right-hand column(s) contain a copy of the passage, usually more sloppily written and presumably written by the student. The student's copy would have been erased and re-written multiple times, and many of the extant Type II tablets are blank on the right-hand side (or, as is most common, the right-hand side has broken off completely). The reverse of a Type II tablet usually contains an excerpt of a different school text, one the student would have learned earlier in his education.
Type II tablets are by far the most common type of exercise tablet discovered at Nippur. Proportionately fewer Type II tablets are known from other sites, but it is possible that more were found but never published; Type II tablets are usually somewhat distorted-looking (often broken or erased), meaning that looters are less likely to have kept and sold them, and early excavators are perhaps less likely to have published them.Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Groningen. pp. 31-37.
Type III Type III tablets, also known as extract tablets or imgidas (Sumerian for "long tablet"), are single-column tablets containing extracts (usually around 40-60 lines) from longer compositions, often belonging to the advanced stages of scribal educationVeldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Groningen. p.38.Tinney, Steve. 1999. "On the Curricular Setting of Sumerian Literature." Iraq 61: 159-172. p. 160.
Type IV ("Lentils") Type IV tablets, also known as "lentils", are circular tablets containing one or a few lines of a composition written out once by the teacher and then a second time by the student. The student's copy appears either underneath the teacher's inscription (typical of Nippur tablets), or on the reverse (more typical of other sites).Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Groningen. p.38-40.
Prisms Prisms are large clay objects with multiple faces (usually four to nine), pierced through the center from top to bottom with a hole. A prism usually bears a complete cuneiform text, written in sections across all of the faces.Veldhuis, Niek. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Groningen. p.29-30.Tinney, Steve. 1999. "On the Curricular Setting of Sumerian Literature. Iraq 61: 159-172. p. 160.