Abstract
“From your childhood to your adult age you have been reposing in [school],” the teaching master reminds one of his older students. “Do you know the scribal art you have pursued?” The student retorts con-fidently, “What would I not know? Ask me, and I will supply you the answer.” The senior scholar is skeptical. He predicts—correctly, as it turns out—that his boastful protégé has an inflated estimation of his own scholarly attainments. A long and difficult examination ensues.
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Notes
A translation and summary of the text, recovered originally from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, appears in Benno Landsberger, “Scribal Concepts of Education,” in Carl H. Kraeling and Robert M. Adams, eds., City Invincible:A Symposium on Urbanization and Cultural Development in the Ancient Near East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 99–101.
Ake W. Sjöberg, “Examenstext A,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Verwandte Gebiete 64 (1975): 137–176.
See Sjöberg, “ln Praise of the Scribal Art,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 24 (1972): 126–129.
Note the discussion in Christopher J. Lucas, “The Scribal Tablet-House in Ancient Mesopotamia,” History of Education Quarterly 19 (Fall 1979): 305–332.
A. Leo Oppenheim, “A Note on the Scribes In Mesopotamia,” in Hans G. Güterbock and Thorkild Jacobsen, eds., Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, April 21, 1965 (Chicago: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago Assyriological Studies No. 16, 1965), p. 253.
Henry Frederick Lutz, “Sumerian Temple Records of the Late Ur Dynasty,” Semitic Philology 9 (May 31, 1928): 117–263
Tom B. Jones, “Sumerian Administrative Documents:An Essay,” in Stephen J. Lieberman, ed., Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen (Chicago: Oriental Institute, University of Chicago Assyriological Studies No. 20, 1976), p. 41.
Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians:Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 229–248.
See Cyril J. Gadd, Teachers and Students in the Oldest Schools (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1956)
Kramer, Schooldays (Philadelphia: University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1949).
Student copy pieces, predictably, extolled the joys of scribal life, which, as noted, was touted as preferable to all others. Of scribes, it was said, “their names have become everlasting, even though they themselves are gone... If doors and buildings were constructed, they are crumbled;... mortuary service is done... tombstones are covered with dirt; and... graves are forgotten. But [the] names [of scribes] are still pronounced because of their books which they made... and the memory of them lasts to the limits of eternity. Be a scribe and put it in your heart that your name may fare similarly.” Quoted in Lionel Casson, Ancient Egypt (New York:Time-Life, 1965), p. 100. See also A. Erman (A. M. Blackman, trans.), The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians (London: Methuen, 1927), pp. 67
James H. Breasted, ed., Ancient Records of Egypt (London: Russell & Russell, 1962), passim.
S. S. Laurie, Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education (New York: Longmans, Green, 1907), p. 47.
Helpful interpretations of the Sophists are supplied in Kenneth J. Freeman, Schools of Hellas (New York: Macmillan, 1922), pp. 157–209
Frederick A. G. Beck, Greek Education: 450–350 B.C. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1964), pp. 147–187
Werner W. Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945). pp. 298–321
James L. Jarrett, ed., The Educational Theories of the Sophists (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1969).
E. Dupreel. Les sophistes: Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias (Neuchatel: Éditions du Griffon, 1948).
Quoted in T.V. Smith, ed., Philosophers Speak for Themselves: From Thales to Plato (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 60.
Helpful treatments of the Socratic response appear in A. E. Taylor. Socrates (Boston: Beacon, 1952)
Francis M. Cornford, Before and After Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932)
Robert R. Rusk and James Scotland, Doctrines of the Great Educators, 5th ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979), pp. 8–10
J. Anderson, Socrates as an Educator (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1962)
E.A. Havelock, “The Evidence for the Teaching of Socrates,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 65 (1934), pp. 282–295.
Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Socrates on Trial (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989)
Mary P. Nicholas, Socrates and the Political Community: An Ancient Debate (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).
See John E. Adamson, The Theory of Education in Plato’s Republic (New York: Macmillan, 1903)
Rupert C. Lodge, Plato’s Theory of Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1947)
Walter Moberty, Plato’ s Conception of Education and Its Meaning Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944)
Warner Fite, The Platonic Legend (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934)
A. E. Taylor, Plato:The Man and His Work, 6th ed. (London: Methuen, 1949)
G C. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries: A Study of Fourth-Century Life and Thought (London: Methuen, 1948)
Richard Livingstone, Plato and Modern Education (London: Cambridge University Press, 1944).
General discussions of the theoretical underpinnings of Platonic pedagogy are treated in Francis M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London: Paul,Trench,Trubner and Company, 1949)
Norman Gully, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (London: Methuen, 1962).
For an illuminating interpretation of curricula and courses of study in the Academy, consult Harold F. Cherniss, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the Academy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1944)
Cherniss, The Riddle of the Early Academy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945).
John P. Lynch, Aristotle’s School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).
See James Bowen, A History of Western Education, Vol. I (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1972), pp. 133–134.
A dated but still useful source for Aristotle as educator is the treatment in T. Davidson, Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideas (London: Heineman, 1904).
See Walter Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).
William K. Frankena, Three Historical Philosophies of Education (Glenview, III.: Scott, Foresman, 1965), pp. 15–79
Robert S. Brumbaugh and Nathaniel M. Lawrence, Philosophers on Education (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), pp. 67ff.
H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (New York: Mentor, 1964), pp. 91–96
Consult B. Farrington, The Faith of Epicurus (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967)
J. M. Rist, Epicurus: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)
G A. Panchas, Epicurus (New York: Twayne, 1967)
D. Clay, Lucretius and Epicurus (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1983)
A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics (London: Duckworth, 1974).
Note William Boyd, The History of Western Education (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1960), p. 44.
J. B. Bury, The Hellenistic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), pp. 40–60.
Mikhail I. Rostovtseff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941)
Erich S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, vol. I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 317–318.
Edward J. Power, A Legacy of Learning (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 62–66.
Relevant references include H. E. Butler, Quintilian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1922)
H. E. Butler, Quintilian as Educator (New York: Twayne, 1974)
W. M. Smail, Quintilian on Education (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938)
G. A. Kennedy, Quintilian (New York: Twayne, 1969).
See Libanius, Autobiography [Oration I] Text, translation and notes by A. F. Norman, (London: University of Hull, 1965), pp. 83
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© 2006 Christopher J. Lucas
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Lucas, C.J. (2006). Higher Learning in Antiquity. In: American Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-10841-8_1
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