Sumerian Proverbs in Their Curricular Context

Abstract

Bendt Alster has published a two-volume edition of all known Old Babylonian Sumerian proverbs. This publication provides an opportunity to look at the proverbs as a corpus and to investigate their actual use. Proverbs are mostly found on school tablets. The curriculum of the school and the position of the proverbs therein is relatively well known. Part I of this article explores some of the implications of looking at the proverbs as didactic instruments for a particular phase of scribal education. Part II includes additional fragments, joins, corrections, and suggestions. THE IDENTIFICATION AND PUBLICATION OF Sumerian proverb collections began in the 1950s and 1960s through the efforts of S. N. Kramer, E. I. Gordon, and J. J. A. van Dijk. Subsequent studies by R. S. Falkowitz and B. Alster made an ever-increasing number of proverbs available, furthering the scholarly discussion over the nature of these texts. Alster's new book is a corpus publication. It includes editions of all Old Babylonian proverb collections. Previously published collections are re-edited. More than half of the twenty-seven collections are presented here for the first time. Bendt Alster's Proverbs of Ancient Sumer is thus a landmark publication. The numbering of the proverb collections used by Alster essentially goes back to Gordon's famous article, "A New Look at the Wisdom of Sumer and Akkad," published in 1960.1 This article, technically a review-article of van Dijk's La Sagesse sumero-accadienne,2 lists the sources of all "wisdom" texts-published and unpublished-known to Gordon at that time, including the proverb collections. The concept "wisdom" was derived from biblical scholarship. The inclusion by van Dijk and Gordon of the proverbs under this label implicitly or This is a review article of: Proverbs of Ancient Sumer: The World's Earliest Proverb Collections. By BENDT ALSTER. Two volumes. Bethesda, Md.: CDL PRESS, 1997. Pp. xxxvi + 548, 133 plates. $90. I wish to thank Professors Miguel Civil (Oriental Institute, Chicago), Steve Tinney, and Erle Leichty (University of Pennsylvania Museum) for permission to publish tablets in their collections. Philip Jones corrected my English and added some helpful remarks.

Imagery and Analogy in Psalm 58:4-9

“…13,44-45. 43 See the discussion of Steyl, See Veldhuis, 1991. VETUS T ESTA M EN TU M 65 (2 0 1 5 ) 114-135 centuries and that was widely copied in ancient Syro-Mesopotamia. At the core of these incantations is a mythological tale about the god Sin, who impregnated a cow and then provided aid for her during the difficulties of childbirth.…”

Walter Ray Bodine: How Mesopotamian Scribes Learned to Write Legal Documents. A Study of the Sumerian Model Contracts in the Babylonian Collection at Yale University. Lewiston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2015. viii, 281 S. XXVII Taf. 15,2 × 22,9 cm ISBN-10: 0-7734-3537-9; ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-3537-7. Preis: $ 179,95

“…The author has highlighted the volumes including model contracts that he knew of and consulted. Some references concerning model contracts or topics relevant to them or to the scribal education in the Old Babylonian Edubba'a should be added to the long list in the volume: Civil (1969;1979), Goddeeris (2009), Obermark (1991), Spada (2012;, Veldhuis (2000;, Wilson (2008).…”