"Listen to my tablet!" The rise of correspondence in Mesopotamia (2004 - 1595 BC). ARCHIBAB 5. NABU 23.
SEPOA| N° d'inventaire | 30994 |
| Format | 21.5 X 30.3 |
| Détails | 464 p., publisher's hardcover. |
| Publication | Paris, 2024 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9791097449070 |
In Mesopotamia, writing was invented and long mastered by a small group of individuals serving the palace and temples. Archaeological and epigraphic data testify to an intensification and widespread use of writing in the first half of the second millennium BC, during the so-called Paleo-Babylonian or Amorite period (2004–1595). Sending letters had become so common that scribes of this era considered writing to have been invented for communicating over distances. This book examines the rise of correspondence during this period. The first chapter places the letters, which are in Akkadian, in their social context by portraying the individuals who corresponded in writing. The second chapter presents, among the exercises studied during the scribal curriculum, those that allowed people to learn to read and write letters in Akkadian. Those copied at school, in particular, are studied in detail for the first time. The third chapter is dedicated to the content of letters across the centuries, while the fourth chapter draws on pragmatics and textual linguistics to compare the degree of implicitness and complexity of approximately three hundred letters written between the 20th and 17th centuries. This research offers for the first time a synthesis of the knowledge accumulated over the last 130 years around a corpus consisting of more than 7,000 Paleo-Babylonian letters and explores in an innovative way the context, content, and language of these texts.
In Mesopotamia, writing was invented and long mastered by a small group of individuals serving the palace and temples. Archaeological and epigraphic data testify to an intensification and widespread use of writing in the first half of the second millennium BC, during the so-called Paleo-Babylonian or Amorite period (2004–1595). Sending letters had become so common that scribes of this era considered writing to have been invented for communicating over distances. This book examines the rise of correspondence during this period. The first chapter places the letters, which are in Akkadian, in their social context by portraying the individuals who corresponded in writing. The second chapter presents, among the exercises studied during the scribal curriculum, those that allowed people to learn to read and write letters in Akkadian. Those copied at school, in particular, are studied in detail for the first time. The third chapter is dedicated to the content of letters across the centuries, while the fourth chapter draws on pragmatics and textual linguistics to compare the degree of implicitness and complexity of approximately three hundred letters written between the 20th and 17th centuries. This research offers for the first time a synthesis of the knowledge accumulated over the last 130 years around a corpus consisting of more than 7,000 Paleo-Babylonian letters and explores in an innovative way the context, content, and language of these texts.