Education in Early 2nd Millennium BC Babylonia.

• Author: Karanashi, Fumi
• Position: Book review

Education in Early 2nd Millennium BC Babylonia. By Alexandra Kleinerman. Cuneiform Monographs, vol. 42. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Pp. xxv + 365. $176.

This book consists of a study of the Sumerian Epistolary Miscellany (chapters 1-5), a new edition of its compositions as well as that of additional Nippur letters (chapter 6), and textual matrices (appendix), the latter two constituting two-thirds of the book. It ends with indexes of Sumerian words and of referenced texts.

In chapter one ("Introduction"), the two main goals of the book are made clear from the outset: one is to provide a new edition of SEpM and additional Nippur letters ("abbreviated ANL for ease of reference") (p. 1), and the other is to evaluate SEpM in relation to the Old Babylonian scribal curriculum. SEpM stands for Sumerian Epistolary Miscellany, the new name given by Michalowski to the "Letter Collection B" (Ali 1964) in consideration of the fact that it contains not only letters but also four non-epistolary compositions (Michalowski 2006: 152 with n. 5). Kleinerman provides a brief summary of elementary Phase I and advanced Phase II of the scribal curriculum and of tablet types used for writing exercises. The chapter ends by outlining the framework of the book.

In chapter two ("Content"), the author tackles the physical and thematic aspects of the SEpM with the principal aim of proving that SEpM was considered a collection in antiquity, at least in Nippur. Her close analysis of prisms, multi-column tablets, single-column tablets containing more than one composition, and tablets containing a single composition as well as a catch line (Table 2 on pp. 13-21) reveals that the order of SEpM compositions was more or less fixed when they were produced. Michalowski (see above) and Kleinerman have reconstructed SEpM as consisting of twenty-two compositions, that is, the twenty of Ali's Letter Collection B and two additional non-epistolary ones. SEpM 1-9 correspond to B 1-9 (note that SEpM la sometimes alternates with SEpM 1); SEpM 12-22 correspond to B 10-20; and the two additional compositions are numbered as SEpM 10 and 11, respectively (Table 1 on p. 12).

The thematic aspects of SEpM corroborate the inferences drawn from its physical aspects. First, the author describes the character of two thematically distinct groups. One is SEpM 1-5, which is royal correspondence involving Shulgi of Ur III and Iddin-Dagan and Lipit-Ishtar of Isin; the other is SEpM 6-22, which contains...