Robson, E;
(2019)
The clay tablet book in Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria.
In: Eliot, S and Rose, J, (eds.)
A Companion to the History of the Book.
(pp. 175-190).
Blackwell: Oxford, UK.
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Abstract
After a brief survey of the mechanics, media, and cultural context of cuneiform writing, I take three case studies to try to determine whether – and, if so, when, where, and how – we can talk of books in the first three millennia of recorded human history in the Middle East. Writings from a school house from the eighteenth century bc city of Nippur show that Sumerian literary culture was primarily oral, with surviving tablets the ephemeral by-products of the memorization process. In seventh-century Nineveh, Assyrian king Ashurbanipal acquired his famous library through copying, inheritance, and wartime plunder as an assertion of imperial control. Five centuries later in Hellenistic Babylonia, chief-priest-to-be Shamash-êtir belonged to a tiny community of cuneiform-literate men who made celestial observations, calculations, and rituals in a last-ditch attempt to preserve traditional temple culture.
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | The clay tablet book in Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1002/9781119018193.ch12 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119018193.ch12 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1476493 |
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