Masters’ Writings and Students’ Writings: School Material in Mesopotamia

International audienceBy nature, school drafts of Mesopotamia were meant to destruction. But, thanks to clay support of writing and ancient recycling practices, they reached us in vast amount. These school tablets were mainly produced along a quite short period, between 18th and 17th century B.C. They contain principally exercises for learning writing, Sumerian language and mathematics. These sources bear witness of phenomena linked with those which are examined in this book: change of knowledge medium, from memorisation to writing; standardisation processes, notably in the field of writing and metrology, in which scribe schools played a key part; emergence of a set of ideological references specifically linked to a scholar milieu. This contribution relies on school sources, particularly mathematical ones, in order to bring to light some aspects of these phenomena. In particular, it endeavours to identify authors, users, function and status of different types of mathematical writings produced in the context of scribal schools