Masters' writings and students' writings: school material in Mesopotamia

Four thousand years ago scribal schools flourished in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions. In these schools young scribes were educated to develop mastery of cuneiform writing on clay tablets, and to learn literature and mathematics. These ancient schools left a huge amount of archaeological and epigraphic evidence. In this chapter, I examine some of this evidence in order to analyze the material produced or used for teaching, and I attempt to identify and investigate authors, users, function and status of different types of mathematical writings produced. Although the situation observed is far removed in time, the analysis is likely to provide insights into phenomena such as the change of knowledge medium, from memorisation to writing; standardisation processes, notably in the field of writing and metrology; the emergence of a set of ideological references specifically linked to a scholarly milieu. The cuneiform school texts allow researchers to study teaching and Learning processes over a very long term, thus integrating more than any other contribution in this volume the time factor of resources