Scribal Education in Sargonic Mesopotami

This dissertation is an investigation of school tablets and scribal education in the period of Sargonic rule in Mesopotamia (c. 2350-2150 BCE). The study is a holistic approach to the topic, investigating the entirety of the education process, with the aim of understanding the process and purpose of scribal education, as well as its historical and social context during the Sargonic period. In order to approach the data, the research is divided into three sections: 1) a discussion of writing technology and palaeography; 2) the content of the school tablets, subdivided according to topic; and 3) a socio-historical contextualization of the school tablets, addressing questions about literacy in the Sargonic period, the archaeological and para-textual evidence for scribal education, as well as the language of instruction.;The results of this research demonstrate that writing and scribal education were closely tied to the administration. Scribal education aimed to prepare an individual to be a capable administrator for the institutions of the empire. The changes in tablet shape and script filtered down into the education process, but there was no attempt by the Sargonic state to standardize or regulate scribal education in Mesopotamia. Instead, the evidence suggests that scribes were instructed in the language and customs of their local institutions, at least as far as the evidence available can demonstrate. Scribes were the cogs of the imperial machine, and their education was aimed at producing bureaucrats who could carry out the necessary administrative duties of the empire's institutions.