The Life of a Scribe: The term dubsar refers to an ancient Mesopotamian scribe, but in modern terminology the people who wrote, recorded, and transcribed the written word would be called linguists, historiographers, artists, revisionists, instructors, and reporters. In fact, the role of a scribe in the ancient world was highly respected and not easily obtained. Traditionally, ancient societies were structured so that children took up the trade of their parents. Boys continued to farm their fathers’ fields, and girls were expected to raise children or take up the artisan craft of their mothers.

Education was not extended to everyone, and the training needed to become a scribe was long and rigorous. Young boys with social status and financial means could be sent to bit tuppi, or a “tablet house” school. There they were taught the style and structure of impressing wedge-shaped markings into clay by first copying short proverbs and simple textual passages. Next, students began the arduous task of transcribing lists consisting of signs, symbols, vocabulary, grammar, and sounds, followed by extensive training in linguistic translation, the number system, lexical text, and the role of a scribe within the community. Once schooling was complete, scribes were employed for a multitude of reasons: by the government, business owners, the royal court of a king, or even their friends and neighbors, but the highest role for a scribe was to become a priest, which during ancient times meant a person highly valued in society and not just held authority in religious matters but also held political importance . The scribes and scholars of ancient Mesopotamia played a seminal role in transmitting knowledge and disseminating ideas.

Mathematics: There are more than 2,000 tablets that demonstrate the sophisticated mathematical minds of the people in ancient Mesopotamia. Concrete math came first, with tokens representing numbers of items, but eventually the equivalent was written in cuneiform to accompany the words that described the items. Approximately 1,613 tablets reveal that by 2000 BCE a numeric system existed for representing weights, measures, addition, subtraction, and division. This decimal system was based on a sexagesimal system, which used 60 as a base, and a value system separated by columns, that functioned much in the same way that the decimal point does today.[2] All that number crunching led the Sumerians to begin crude speculations about the nature of numbers. Processes involving numbers and simple math turned to more complex and abstract formulas (see fig. 14). In this manual for quadratic problem-solving, two dozen of the calculations were applied toward building projects and land surveys.

Astrology: All this record-keeping and administration required much more than the ability to calculate and record day-to-day transactions. State-building demanded an efficient system for measuring long periods of time. Similarly, agriculture required more than irrigation techniques, so the Sumerians invented calendars. Through careful observation of celestial patterns, they divided a year into 12 months according to the cycles of the moon. This interest in measuring long periods of time led the Sumerians to develop a complicated knowledge of astronomy. The zodiac was another invention used to measure yearly time. However, adjustments needed to be made since a lunar month is 29 days and 12+ hours, which does not exactly correlate with a solar year, which is 365 and a quarter days (actually 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 47.8 seconds). To deal with this mathematical inaccuracy, around 2500 BCE an intercalary day was inserted every four years, creating a “leap year” that brought the seasons back to normal.[3]

In a modern society people can use their electronic devices to access weather forecasts, but the people of ancient Mesopotamia looked to the sky to understand their physical environment. Mathematic innovations helped them to chart and map the daily movement of the planets and stars, which allowed them to track the passage of time with a 12-month calendar and a pattern of changing seasons, all of which is still used today. Astrological observation could also predict the best seasons for sowing and reaping crops. The constellations also became important to those early societies, as they were central to folklore and mythmaking. Where modern scientists and astronomers have advanced technology to evaluate the depth of our sky above, people of the ancient world relied on epistemological and metaphysical knowledge.[4]

Through knowledge passed down for generations, the pattern of the solar system was observed, calculated, and recorded because ancient civilizations believed that everything happened for a reason. If people could understand the movement of the sky, they thought that they could interpret their future. In modern times we understand that thunder is created by atmospheric conditions but imagine experiencing thunder and lightning while living in 3000 BCE. This was a very scary and unpredictable phenomenon to which no rational understanding could be applied. When they were unable to explain the reason for thunder and lightning, early societies turned to metaphysics. Other everyday events and rare occurrences also took on a deeply religious meaning for the same reason.