But how do you keep records without writing? Well, not very practically. Before writing, Sumerians had a system to record their business transactions; it involved tokens made out of clay and a clay bubble to hold the tokens, which they baked into the bubble, rendering the tokens, well, completely pointless. Luckily, someone in B. Along with reading and writing cuneiform, scribes eventually evolved to have chops in math or science or business or literature.

If you could read and write in ancient Mesopotamia, you had a good life, and chances were pretty high you were born into that good life. The son of a merchant had as much a chance at becoming a scribe as the son of a king. Even more socially progressive, it eventually became that the daughter of a king, had as much chance of becoming a scribe as her male counterpart. It is only appropriate, since Sumerians credited the goddess Nisaba with the invention of writing!

In other words, scribes had to know the context of what they were reading in order to read it, pretty much on a jargon level. The reason for this is because cuneiform, a script used to record more than one language, was a phonetic one—one syllable could make up any number of words, with any number of definitions, depending on whether you were writing in Sumerian or some other Mesopotamian language.

Boys were sent to an e-dubba , a tablet house where they would spend years learning to read and write the cuneiform script and the subjects they would write about.

When they graduated, they became dubsars , tablet writers. That schooling was no cakewalk for the student, nor was it for his parents. The son, in the meantime, had to climb up a hierarchy within an e-dubba. You can read more about what these tablet houses were like here and here. It took a few years for women to show up in records as scribes. According to Radner and Robson, the earliest record of a woman scribe dates to the Akkad period ca. In her book Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia , Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat wrote that women scribes were the daughters of the elite, some the daughters of scribes.

Nemet-Nejat also points out that there were women scribes who were slaves: As far as how those women scribes got their chops, priestesses were taught at the temples they served, while those not taking the religious path were taught at home.

For the first thousand years or so after writing was invented, everything written down was of an administrative nature. They were practical people, those Sumerians. If he came from a family of merchants, he kept records for the business; if he worked in a temple, he recorded offerings for the gods.

Heck, e-dubbas needed teachers, and given that e-dubbas were focused on producing bureaucratic officials, the king, whether literate or not, needed a scribe. He could set up shop in the middle of the town square and write letters for his illiterate neighbors and never go hungry like most people did in the ancient world.

What we might consider HR records from Sippar and Mari too show that a good number of those women were slaves. Women scribes are also known to have written songs and lullabies for the royalty, along with laments. According to Nemet-Nejat, royal women of the Ur III Dynasty B. As I mentioned in the last section, only some scribes got to let themselves be known directly through their work to anyone other than their employer.

I also mentioned there were female slave scribes whose social status gave them less pay than their colleagues. Obviously, there was a hierarchy within the elite. The son of a merchant has as much chance to become a dubsar as the son of a king, sure, but once those two are out in the real world, their social differences surely resurface.

Moreover, without a signature, it gets hard to know anything about the scribe, even their gender. Nemet-Nejat wrote that we see signatures on some tablets as early as B. For scribes who got to sign their names, as their heads inflated with importance, they took to including their lineage, traveling back as far as their earliest ancestors helping us determine their social status thousands of years later!

How did people in Mesopotamia make money?? (Look below)? | Yahoo Answers

Loftier scribes made seals, autograph stamps, if you will. It is through these scenes we get an idea of just how revered a literate royal or noble was. On the cylinder seal of Arad-Nanna, a high official and possibly of royal blood, we see him having audience with the king, with a goddess in tow. According to Starr, the difference in body language of Arad-Nanna and the goddess accompanying him is one of great significance. This suggests he is a member of the royal family.

The goddess who accompanies Arad-Nanna is not a minor goddess … The multiple horns on her helmet indicates that she is a major goddess. Significantly, she has her hands held up in reverence to the king, whereas Arad-Nanna does not.

Even goddesses took the backseat to scribes of noble or royal birth, and it is clear that it was those individuals whom the king employed in his courts to be his officials and recorders of his feats.

As for knowing the gender of the writer, often the only thing we have to go on to tell us a woman is the author of something is the presence of a feminine touch in the writing. Starr sensed that in a tablet he translated recently. On his blog, Starr has written about Tablet It is a tablet that embodies all of what Nemet-Nejat indirectly says makes it the work of a unique author.

Tablet 36 was a mystery until Starr translated it and found it was an encoded political satire, a work written by one, no ordinary scribe: Starr points out that the author of Tablet 36 was most probably not a full-time scribe, just someone who could write and had the luxury of thinking for himself, along with the time to create a code for his dangerous thoughts.

This guy was a completely different animal from, say, Arad-Nanna, who was too drunk on rubbing elbows with the king to criticize him. Enheduanna , daughter of Sargon of Akkad and the Shakespeare of Sumerian literature, was also a different animal.

Enheduanna was no run-of-the-mill scribe who only wrote generic praise-filled songs to the king, no.

Fast Facts About Mesopotamia: Modern Iraq

Radner and Robson wrote that being an author in a world of scribes was a feat for a king, and certainly one for a woman of high birth:. It is safe to say that the first scribes were contemporaries of their own lasting legacy, and the status they enjoyed was appropriate, whether they recorded sheep sales or wrote in code….

The Sumerian invention of writing http: Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia Women scribes https: Priests and priestesses in Ancient Mesopotamia http: Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia Scribe signatures https: Scribal social ranking in Sumerian Society http: Family life in Ancient Sumeria http: Women As Scribes Throughout History http: An introduction to the princess wife http: The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture https: Tablet 36 Sumerian Shakespeare http: You wrote about my suggestion!

I commented on another post about two years ago suggesting you write a bit more on scribes!

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Home About All Mesopotamia. Scribing with their reed styli.

Money in Mesopotamia on JSTOR

Source Before writing Around B. A clay bulla and the tokens inside it. Source Luckily, someone in B. Cuneiform went through a series of innovations that turned it into cool-looking, abstract symbols.

How did the people of Mesopotamia earn their living

Source And so writing was born, bringing with it the demand for those who could do it. A day at school. An illustration of boys studying to be scribes, the future elite of society.

Source Along with money, becoming a scribe took time and hard work. Source Boys were sent to an e-dubba , a tablet house where they would spend years learning to read and write the cuneiform script and the subjects they would write about. What did scribes write?

A scribe was first and foremost a recorder of history. Source For the first thousand years or so after writing was invented, everything written down was of an administrative nature. This brings us to what scribes could do with their skills, subjectively or not. Code of Hammurabi stele. This was some commission for one special scribe. Source As I mentioned in the last section, only some scribes got to let themselves be known directly through their work to anyone other than their employer.

The seal of Arad-Nanna, a scribe of very high status. Source On the cylinder seal of Arad-Nanna, a high official and possibly of royal blood, we see him having audience with the king, with a goddess in tow. When a scribe is an author Tablet A mystery, far from administrative.

Source On his blog, Starr has written about Tablet Source Enheduanna , daughter of Sargon of Akkad and the Shakespeare of Sumerian literature, was also a different animal. Radner and Robson wrote that being an author in a world of scribes was a feat for a king, and certainly one for a woman of high birth: Sources and further reading: Twitter Facebook More Tumblr.

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