Sumerian Education

Another history article brings another post about Sumer. In this article, I will cover Sumerian education including writing, mathematics and science. Hopefully, there will only be a two or three more articles about Sumer before moving onto some other Middle Eastern countries. By the way, today is the fiftieth article on Histories and Mysteries so that is really exciting. I can't believe this blog has been up for almost a year come April.

There are four more important terms to know before we continue our study: culture, civilization, and education. The textbook definition I learned for culture is "a way of life." Culture includes manners, education, clothing, architecture, art, religion, etc. and etc. By the way, when I say textbook, I mean my 9th grade history textbook, World History and Cultures. I use that textbook as kind of a guide of which places to stop next in our study so it has been very useful.

A civilization on the other hand must possess certain requirements:

• Cities
• Organized government
• A specialization of labor
• Developments of the arts (architecture, religious structure, technological advances, etc.)
• A writing system
• A written set of laws
• Mastery over the food supply

All of those are important especially a food supply. As one teacher illustrated in my class, if the only thing you can catch to eat is a squirrel tail that was ran over by a chariot, your civilization is not going to last very long at all. Written laws (so there is a record of the law)and a government are also just as important to maintain order and some sort of civility.

Education is simply the transmitting of knowledge from generation to generation. In the case of a culture and civilization, education would include passing down cultural symbols and customs. For example, the Star of David is a cultural symbol that Israel passed down to the modern day.

Education is extremely important, not only to ensure that each generation is able to move forward with the discoveries of the past generation, but also to ensure that what the next generation carries on is the truth. Unfortunately, the next generation is only being taught falsehoods such as evolution and relativism instead of the truths of the Bible. Can you even imagine a world without a regard toward the truth? It's going to be complete disaster in the end times when basically everybody hates God and the truth. That's where the world is going...

The last term is cultural diffusion which is spreading of cultural aspects to other groups of people. An example of this is the silk trade coming to Europe or English Enlightenment coming to France. Perhaps, America is a great example of cultural diffusion because of the amounts of diverse ideas we have in this country.

The Sumerians have made much improvements in the fields of writing, arithmetic, science, and craftsmanship. I will leave craftsmanship and the textile industry for another article. At first, the Sumerians didn't have a formal schooling system like we in many parts of the world today. There was a school for scholars to learn how to write cuneiform and copy records of their civilization. Later, science, mathematics, art, and a wide variety of other studies were introduced into the school until the school became a center of culture. This school was called edubba or "tablet house" because cuneiform was usually written on clay tablets.



A cuneiform tablet

But before I get to cuneiform, I will briefly discuss the Sumerian's advancement in mathematics and science. Science should not be confused with astrology which is essentially studying the position of the stars to tell the future. That's not science; it's fortune-telling. Aside from the technological advancements for farming that we discussed in the last history article, the Sumerians created the lunar month which used the cycles of the moon to determine the length of each month. This calendar also included a thirteenth month to line up their calendar with the solar year. Sumerian mathematics was based on the number ten much like the metric system and they also widely used the number 60. 60 is divisible by many different numbers and was used to express the degrees of a circle (6 x 60 = 360 degrees in a circle). The number 60 was also used in a weights system which is the Middle Eastern currency system. This number would be used in converting currencies. For example, 60 minas equals 1 shekel and 60 shekels equals 1 talent.



A chart showing the progression of
cuneiform throughout the years. This
chart only shows concrete nouns.

Cuneiform and the art of writing is the most important Sumerian contribution to the world.  

The earliest readable cuneiform writings date back to 3200 BC. There are three stages of cuneiform: pictograms, ideograms, and phonograms. Pictograms used symbols to represent material things but not abstract things like thoughts or emotions. Ideograms were created to give symbols to the abstract. The phonograms gave way to the syllabary, symbols representing syllables in words. Each language not only has to represent concrete and abstract words but also provide syllable divisions and spelling. Cuneiform had approximately 600 characters in their language. Scholars copying cuneiform would use a reed stylus as a pen and a clay tablet as paper.

In the 19th century, Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, an English army officer, decoded cuneiform writing. Since then, archaeologists have been able to roughly translate records, letters, and laws written by the Sumerians. Most of the information about Sumer is known from the translated cuneiform tablets.

Well, this week's article is over for now. The quote for today is "Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil." - C. S. Lewis. And it's true. If we don't teach the next generation a single ounce of truth from the Word of God, it doesn't matter if all the children know everything there is to know about grammar or mathematics. They will just be a group of smart sinners without knowledge of the truth. It is important that the next generation learn biblical principles because the Bible changes lives for the better, not merely education alone.