Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

DURING 19TB. CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 525
tablets were uninscribed.
The contents of these interesting
"scraps " of clay from a Babylonian "waste basket" are as
unique and manifold as their forms are peculiar. They
enable us to study the methods of writing and reading, and
the way in which a foreign language (Sumerian) was taught
at Nippur in the third pre-Christian millennium.
The very first lesson in writing that the children received
is brought vividly before us. I refer to several large tablets
comparatively neatly inscribed. They contain the three
simple elements of which cuneiform signs are generally composed,
in the order here given and repeated
again and again over three columns. Or I
mention a much smaller table showing no
T^-<
thing but the last given wedge dozens of times inscribed
in horizontal lines upon the clay. When the first difficulties
had been mastered by the student, he had to put those
three elements together and make real cuneiform signs.
As we do in our Assyrian and Babylonian classes to-day,
the easiest and most simple characters were selected first.
The pupil was then told to group them together in different
ways, generally without regard to their meaning, simply
for the sake of fixing them firmly in mind. There are a
good many specimens preserved which illustrate this " second
step " in the study of Babylonian writing. We have,
e. g., a large fragment with two identical columns, in which
every line begins with the sign ba : i. ba-a, 1. ba-mu> 3.
ba-ba-mu y
4. ba-ni, 5. ba-ni-ni, 6. ba-ni-a, 7. ba-ni-mu> etc.
Another fragment deals with more difficult characters placed
alongside each other in a similar manner: 1. za-an-tur, 1.
za-an-tur-tur, 3. za-an-ka, 4. za-an-ka-ka, 5. za-an-ka-a, 6.
za-an-ka-mu. A fragment of the easier sort of exercises
offers, 1. an-ni-si, 1. an-ni-su, 3. an-ni-mu> etc. A fourth one
is of additional value, because it contains no less than four
mistakes in a comparatively small space.
Let me correct the
exercises of this young Babylonian who lived prior to Abra-