About 3500 years ago, Sumerians invented cuneiform writing and writing. However, nearly 1000 years passed, the writing revolution was completed around 2600, and then cuneiform characters were widely used in other non-economic management writing fields after the simplification of the characters in the third Ur dynasty.
Sumerian is an isolated language, which belongs to cohesive language and has no boundary with other languages (such as Semitic and Persian). Even for scribes, reading and writing are difficult. Many complex symbols need brain memory, and almost all symbols have multiple meanings and pronunciations. Sumerian also has no clear grammatical rules. There are never punctuation marks and spaces between words. It is difficult to tell where one word should end and another word should start. A sentence is just a long string of symbols. It is better for a scribe to translate a line in his mind than to understand it.
In ancient Mesopotamia, people were basically illiterate, and scribes were scribes, usually very important people, with social status probably second only to priests and few talents. They are trained to write cuneiform and are familiar with different languages in the two river basins. Without a scribe, the distribution of food and goods can't be accounted for, letters can't be written and read, royal monuments can't be engraved with meritorious deeds, and popular stories can only be passed on from mouth to mouth, which is easy to be forgotten.
As a result, Sumer established the earliest school in human society, "Writing education begins with dolls", and began to train more clay tablet scribes from an early age. Its school education and training goal is very clear, that is, to make students among the ranks of librarians. It is called "Du Bhusal", which literally means "Clay Writer". Sumerian schools also became the so-called "scribe schools" (edubba). The Sumerian pronunciation is "e2-dub-ba-a", which is transliterated as "Ai Du Ba", where e2 stands for house, dub stands for clay tablet, Ba stands for distribution, and the last A stands for possessive case, which together means "house with clay tablet" or "clay tablet bookstore". The Clay Book House School is not only a place to train librarians, but also a national knowledge transfer and reserve center.
However, ancient Sumerian schools could not benefit all ordinary people, let alone popularize compulsory education. Someone has studied the personal seal held by Sumerian scribes. The official signature of a scribe is usually expressed by tracing the lineage. 70% of them are sons of nobles, temple officials and wealthy businessmen. It is not surprising to think that years of training in scribe school is very expensive, and only the rich can afford it.
During his visit to Ur, Woolley once found a "clay bookstore" among many sites. There are several rows of neatly arranged mounds in the house, and another relatively high mound stands in front of us, which seems to be the teacher's podium and the students' desks. The most telling thing is that there are nearly 2000 clay tablets at home. However, this room is not big. Professor Gong Yushu believes that Sumer is at most a "private school" rather than a government-run school.
The curriculum of Sumerian government-run schools is usually divided into two stages: basic education and advanced education, which are equivalent to our primary and secondary schools. The content of the course is difficult and demanding.
Generally speaking, there are four different basic courses: 1, writing skills training; 2. Recite Sumerian nouns; 3, familiar with digital symbols; 4. Learn Sumerian through literature. Students need to practice and remember every day. It takes many years to master the writing method and art of cuneiform. Besides, students must also study business, mathematics, science and literature, so as not to copy what they have seen and heard by mistake. The future scribe should be responsible not only for writing, but also for measurement and field measurement.
The study and life of Sumerian school have been recorded on the clay tablets by the teachers at that time. In fact, memorizing and repeatedly copying cuneiform is the most basic training in their school education. The clay tablets used by students to copy will be reused in many ways (just like we recycle textbooks today). They often rewrite their homework over and over again, and then constantly erase the written words to avoid the trouble of remaking the practice clay tablets.
Let's go through just visiting and walk into the "Clay Bookstore" of the third dynasty in Ur, and see how ancient Sumerian students learned cuneiform, and take this sketch report as the end of Sumerian cuneiform legend journey.
When you walk into the gate of Sumerian school, you will definitely see the statue of Nisaba, the goddess who writes words. She is regarded as the patron saint of clay tablet scribes, just like Confucius, the most sacred teacher standing in front of China Confucian Temple, and a "holy" figure (immortal). However, if Nisaba's gender is placed in ancient China, it will be regarded as "disrespect".
Nisaba is the daughter of Anjia and Unas (the embodiment of heaven and earth), and her status is not noble. At first, Uma, as the goddess of grain in the early dynasty (2900-2700 BC), was responsible for recording the grain trade and taking charge of the Sumerian diet, which confirmed the original use of cuneiform characters-food is the first thing for the people. When she was the goddess of grain, she was depicted as a grain stalk; But in the later Sumerian mythology, it was sublimated into "a woman holding a golden pen and studying the clay tablet depicting the starry sky". In the years when she wrote about the revolution, she was listed as one of the most famous gods in the Sumerian Pantheon. Nisaba's power and prestige are getting stronger and stronger with the development of writing, so that the clay tablets of all scribe schools must end with one sentence: "Praise belongs to Nisaba".
Inviting Goddess to be the "Minister of Education" of the third Ur Dynasty also illustrates the fact that although most of the students who can read and write cuneiform are young men, there is clay evidence that women can still be scribes. The "signature" of Enkhduanna, the princess priest of Ur, also appeared in hymns and poems many times, including her vivid personal interaction with the goddess Inan, which showed that women had a certain position in Sumerian times.
Cut the gossip. The school teacher with textbooks and reed pens has stood in front of the classroom.
The teacher himself may be an active bookkeeper. He didn't say anything. As soon as he started class, he would assign today's class homework: give everyone a clay tablet with words written on the left. Students must spell and copy the words according to the teacher's model essay.
Below is a homework tablet handed in by a student. On the left is the text written by the teacher (equivalent to our textbook), and on the right is the spelling exercise done by the students (equivalent to our classroom work).
Please forgive us for not finding examples of Sumer's course materials, but using Akkadian cuneiform as materials. However, people did find that many bookkeepers who signed Sulupak documents written by Sumerians were Semites. Therefore, we have reason to believe that the Semu people of the Third Ur Dynasty lived with the Sumerians for a long time, and they learned Sumerian while retaining their own language. Among them, it is not unusual for someone to become a teacher in Sumerian scribe school, and it is by no means "impossible" for them to use Akkadian "textbooks" for teaching.
The teacher's model essay on the left is interpreted as:
I am sargon, the great king, the king of Akkad. /Mother is a high priest and doesn't know her father; My father's brother lives in the mountains; /My city is located on the bank of the Euphrates River; /My mother, the high priest gave birth to me, and she secretly gave birth to me; /She put me in a rush basket and sealed the lid with asphalt; /She threw me into the river before it rose. ...
It turns out that the textbook tells the legendary life of King sargon of Akkadian Kingdom.
The homework of the students on the right is spelling exercises. The content written by the wedge symbol is pronounced as follows:
Nishi-Gil/Nishi-Gil-Il/Nishi-Hirsch/Nishi-Hirsch ...
Students practice writing the same words in various ways, which helps them learn different cuneiform symbols.
The bell has rung, and the text learning course of the Third Dynasty School in Ur has ended. Sumer's clay tablet bookstore is about to enter the "last lesson".
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In the late period of the third Ur dynasty, Amorites from the Syrian desert began to invade the two river basins. In 2006, Elam fighters occupied city of ur, and Ibsen, the last king of poor Ur, was captured, taken to Iran and died in another country.
In ancient Sumer, an elegy is sung everywhere, which is a great swan song in the history of world literature-the elegy of Ur's death. This elegy is not only the eternal pillar of literature in the two river basins, but also the originator of various elegies in the world:
God abandoned us, just as migratory birds moved from their hometown. /ur is ruined, lamentation is accompanied by pain. /The temple collapsed and the city was blocked by smoke. /On the wide street, people used to have fun, but now they are lying around. In the vast fields, people used to sing and dance, but now they are lying on the bodies. /My Nanna God, leave your city. ...
However, the demise of Sumerian cuneiform is not the end of cuneiform, but a new beginning: Semu people inherited the heritage of Sumerian civilization and successively established Babylonian and Assyrian empires, which made cuneiform glorious for nearly 2,000 years before it was finally destroyed. However, our story book happened to be here, and all parts of the Sumerian-Akkadian cuneiform were turned back. The content of the cuneiform follow-up story, which we have finished in the last chapter, needs readers to read it again. ...
According to the basic thread of cuneiform decoding, the evolution history of cuneiform from back to front, along with the 3,000-year history flowing in Mesopotamia, is complicated and dazzling.
We need to re-follow the positive sequence of time development, and finally make a brief review to help readers clarify the trajectory of cuneiform changes and try to answer the question of why cuneiform was destroyed.