Scribal Worlds
Scholarship and classification in cuneiform cultures
Eduardo A. Escobar (Editor), Kiersten Neumann (Editor), C. Jay Crisostomo (Editor)
Scribal Worlds: Scholarship and classification in cuneiform cultures delves into the history of the earliest writing cultures of the ancient Middle East, bridging disciplines such as ancient history, philology, semiotics, material culture studies, and philosophy of science. Bringing together scholars in the fields of Assyriology, History of Science, and Art History, the collection examines how language, ontology, classification, and scribal learning shaped cuneiform traditions. Through focused textual and material case studies, contributors employ diverse heuristic tools to reconstruct the intellectual frameworks of scribal cultures and the transmission of knowledge. Inspired by and in appreciation of the work of Niek Veldhuis, this collaborative and timely exploration highlights the interwoven nature of classification and scholarship within cuneiform studies, demonstrating how specific texts, object groups, and practices can be interpreted within their cultural contexts. By critically analysing and reframing these sources, the volume exemplifies how scholars extract meaning from even the most fragmentary evidence—truly ‘squeezing juice out of stones’.critically analysing and reframing these sources, the volume exemplifies how scholars extract meaning from even the most fragmentary evidence—truly ‘squeezing juice out of stones’.
List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Abbreviations
Editorial conventions
Introduction: Learning from a Once Broken List
C. Jay Crisostomo, Kiersten Neumann, Eduardo A. Escobar
Part I: Frameworks
1 The order-of-the-world: Things, lumps, and texts
Francesca Rochberg
2 Is there a Mesopotamian ontology?
Marian H. Feldman
Part II: Categories and Classification
3 What’s in a name? Material self-referentiality, aesthetic values, and stone classification
Kiersten Neumann
4 Imperial Hermeneutics: Classifying the Assyrian Group Vocabularies
Eduardo A. Escobar and C. Jay Crisostomo
5 Gods in stone and clay: Classifying figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia
Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper
6 Raven, falcon, dove: Birds and the Mesopotamian exorcist
Gina Konstantopoulos
Part III: Scribal Education and Knowledge Transmission
7 Back to House F: On community, temporality, and locality in Old Babylonian scribal schooling
Eleanor Robson
8 The role of Sumerian model contracts in Old Babylonian scribal education: Standardisation and variants
Gabriella Spada
9 On the formal and social aspects of the acquisition of literacy in Old Assyrian times
Cécile Michel and Piotr Michalowski
10 Ezekiel in the Edubba
Laurie E. Pearce
11 Young Anu-bēlšunu: Two rare tablets from Hellenistic Uruk
Enrique Jiménez
Part IV: Texts and Signs
12 The Old Babylonian transmission of the Early Dynastic Proverb Collection 1
Jana Matuszak
13 Writing Akkadian in Sumer: Scenes from the Mesag archive
Emmanuelle Salgues
14 Mesopotamian personal name lists: Classification, education, or scholarship?
Paul Delnero
15 A Sumerian Šuʼila-prayer to Ištar of Nineveh and her akītu festival in Nineveh
Daisuke Shibata
16 Wedge order and the character-forming rules of Neo-Assyrian cuneiform
Jonathan Taylor
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781806550821
Number of illustrations: 81
Publication date: 29 June 2026
EPUB ISBN: 9781806550838
Eduardo A. Escobar (Editor)
Kiersten Neumann (Editor)
C. Jay Crisostomo (Editor)
Related titles
Scribal Worlds
Scholarship and classification in cuneiform cultures
Scribal Worlds: Scholarship and classification in cuneiform cultures delves into the history of the earliest writing cultures of the ancient Middle East, bridging disciplines such as ancient history, philology, semiotics, material culture studies, and philosophy of science. Bringing together scholars in the fields of Assyriology, History of Science, and Art History, the collection examines how language, ontology, classification, and scribal learning shaped cuneiform traditions. Through focused textual and material case studies, contributors employ diverse heuristic tools to reconstruct the intellectual frameworks of scribal cultures and the transmission of knowledge. Inspired by and in appreciation of the work of Niek Veldhuis, this collaborative and timely exploration highlights the interwoven nature of classification and scholarship within cuneiform studies, demonstrating how specific texts, object groups, and practices can be interpreted within their cultural contexts. By critically analysing and reframing these sources, the volume exemplifies how scholars extract meaning from even the most fragmentary evidence—truly ‘squeezing juice out of stones’.critically analysing and reframing these sources, the volume exemplifies how scholars extract meaning from even the most fragmentary evidence—truly ‘squeezing juice out of stones’.
