Reading and Writing in Babylon.

• Author: Chavalas, Mark W.
• Position: Book review

Reading and Writing in Baby/on. By DOMINIQUE CHARPIN. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge, Mass.: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 2010. Pp. xv + 315, illus. $29.95.

This present work by Dominique Charpin is a translation by J. M. Todd of Lire et ecrire it Babylone, published in 2008 in Paris by Presses Universitaires de France. However, this is not simply a translation; Charpin has reworked some chapters that were similar to portions of his Writing, Law. and Kingship: Essays on Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010).

Stemming from his Le clerge d'Ur au siecle d'Hammurabi (XIXe--XVIle siecles av. J.-C.) (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1986), Reading and Writing in Babylon has as one of its central foci the idea that literacy in Mesopotamia was much more widespread than traditionally understood, which Charpin has concluded from his extensive work on the Mari archives. In fact. there is perhaps no one more qualified to make this assertion.

Charpin begins in the first chapter with a somewhat diachronic introduction to the cuneiform writing system and the discipline of Assyriology in general. Because of the abundant source materials, he spends a good proportion of the chapter dealing with scribal schools (edubba) and education in the Old Babylonian period. He argues that the texts found in the so-called scribal installations at both Old Babylonian Mari and Ur contained primarily administrative, rather than school texts. He has thus called into question the conclusions of the excavators of Mari (Parrot) and Ur (Woolley). He further argues that instead of major institutionalized schools, there were houses of -literati" who trained apprentices at their homes. In addition, many of the Sumerian literary copies that have been uncovered were no doubt apprentice copies, as they were full of errors.

Charpin asks many questions that perhaps an interested public may want to have answered, but that Assyriologists do not often think about. For example. were texts read out loud or silently'? Charpin provides numerous examples to show that texts were meant to be read out loud (a diviner might even spray saliva while reading; p. 41). Who could read and write? Charpin tackles this question. providing evidence that there were more than just a few kings who claimed to know the science of writing. Moreover, the Old Assyrian merchants appear to have been versed in the art of writing, although the writing system used in Cappadocia was somewhat...