Advanced Education

Advanced education was the most flexible part of the scribal curriculum. It could be tailored to the particular specialty of the scribe: the palace, the temple, commerce, military, etc. The advanced curriculum was often taken from other spheres, such as temple hymns or rituals, and used for scribal study (much like the Gettysburg Address or the “Star-Spangled Banner” might be reused as part of a school curriculum). There is evidence of cuneiform literature including Gilgamesh, Adapa, and law codes like Hammurabi that have been excavated in the southern Levant dating to the second millennium BCE. This provides a tangible vector of transmission for these traditions into the early alphabetic scribal tradition.

From Lists to Literature

Spelling and vocabulary were taught though lexical lists. Fragments of at least two, perhaps three, of these lists are present at Kuntillet ʿAjrud. The standardization of spelling reflects the growth and centralization in government and bureaucracy, which were the primary consumers of writing. Fragments of cuneiform lists found in Israel dating to the Late Bronze Age give direct evidence of a vector of transmission for the cuneiform lexical tradition into early Israel. In fact, they provide a key for interpreting the Gezer Calendar as well as biblical texts. Lexical lists taught standardized spelling, but they also classified knowledge. In everyday commerce, lists were critical to administration and bureaucracy. In biblical literature, lists were adapted in a number of ways and incorporated into biblical literature.

Proverbial Sayings

Scribes learned many sayings, wisdom sayings and proverbial sayings, that could be used for and adapted to a variety of contexts. From the comparative cuneiform evidence in “lentil” texts, proverbs were copied and memorized individually. To be sure, there are also collections of proverbs, but the individual sayings were their primary context. We then have evidence that these individual sayings were employed in letters, narratives, and liturgy. All these literary contexts provide parallels for the one example of this is a reciprocity statement used at Kuntillet ʿAjrud. This one example finds parallels in Ugarit, the Amarna letters, Aramaic inscriptions, and even Papyrus Amherst 63. This variety is also paralleled in biblical literature where the reciprocality formula appears in both biblical narratives and liturgy. More generally, the concept of individual sayings (as opposed to larger collections) that were memorized and used by scribes in different contexts is also evident in biblical literature.

Epilogue

First, this book has sketched out some of the historical context from which the early Israelite scribal curriculum emerged. As the New Kingdom receded, emerging kingdoms borrowed and adapted some of the Egyptian bureaucracy that was left behind as Egypt retreated to its confines along the Nile River Valley. In addition, there is tangible influence of the cuneiform school tradition from the Late Bronze Age in the development of an early alphabetic curriculum. There are a number of striking examples of how the cuneiform scribal curriculum can be seen in early Hebrew inscriptions beginning with the Gezer Calendar, which looks like an adaptation of a Mesopotamian lexical tradition. The Hebrew Bible itself was influenced by this scribal curriculum. And the scribal creativity that generated biblical literature had its foundation in the building blocks of the educational curriculum.

Alphabets and Acrostics

The first school exercises were simple abecedaries teaching young scribes the order, shape, and sound of the letters. These exercises can be compared to early cuneiform exercises like the Syllable B lists and the TU-TA-TI exercises, which also trained young scribes in the basic sounds and shapes. The order and shape of letters were standardized in the early Iron Age, and different orders for the alphabet were introduced in Canaan and Egypt. The abgad order become normative for Phoenicia and Israel, and the halaḥam order was used in Egypt and South Semitic (e.g., Ethiopic, Old South Arabic). Alphabetic exercises were then adapted into acrostic poetry.

Scribal Curriculum at Kuntillet ʿAjrud

This chapter offers a new interpretation of the Kuntillet ʿAjrud inscriptions as a variety of scribal exercises that parallel the basic outlines of the early cuneiform school curriculum. Using the framework of cuneiform school curriculum, this chapter analyzes the evidence from Kuntillet ʿAjrud. Elementary curriculum was found on two large jars that show evidence of students writing, erasing, and repeating practice texts. Evidence of elementary curriculum includes abecedaries, vocabulary lists, model texts, and proverbial sayings. Inscriptions on the plastered walls of the fortress may have served as advanced texts, taken from liturgy, which students memorized and recited. This evidence can be supplemented from fragmentary evidence from other sites as well as comparative evidence from Ugaritic.

The Emergence of Scribal Education in Ancient Israel

This chapter first sketches out the history of scholarship on scribal education. The chapter summarizes new archaeological discoveries that point to the overlap between the Late Bronze Age cuneiform scribal culture and the emergence of early alphabetic writing in Canaan/Israel. This overlap provides a vector of transmission from cuneiform to early alphabetic education. Tangible evidence of this vector of transmission is found in cuneiform school texts dating to the Late Bronze Age, which is the only time such school texts are known in the southern Levant. Thus, scribal training in cuneiform overlaps the emergence of the alphabet in the southern Levant. Parallels of the borrowing from cuneiform and development of alphabetic school curriculum can also be adduced from the Ugaritic alphabetic tradition.

Letters, Paragraphs, and Prophets

In more advanced elementary education, scribes learned to write typical formulaic documents, such as letters. After making lists and receipts, writing letters was the most common type of ancient scribal activity. These model documents are known in the cuneiform school tradition, which served as a model in the development of the early alphabetic school tradition. The earliest alphabetic examples of model letters were excavated in Ras Shamra, that is, ancient Ugarit. They illustrate both aspects of borrowing from the cuneiform tradition as well as creative adaptation. Letter writing followed a formal template, but this template was made to be adapted. One of the most important adaptations of this scribal learning was in the prophetic messenger formula of biblical prophecy. The genre was also adapted for biblical storytelling. And, some of the technical and formal aspects, such as the use of “and now” as a new paragraph marker, were adapted and applied by scribes more generally to the writing of literature.