THE SUMERIAN RHETORIC COLLECTIONS.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

FALKOWITZ, ROBERT SETH.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania.

Subjects (All):

Education--History.

Education.

History.

0520.

Local Subjects:

0520.

Physical Description:

288 pages

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 41-03A.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

Among the written remains from Old Babylonian Mesopotamia are a series of untitled, canonical collections of examples of the Sumerian language. These examples range in length from one line to more than ten lines. They show tremendous thematic, structural and poetic variation.

Since the 1930's, when copies of the cuneiform tablets on which excerpts from these collections were written were first published, the collections have been interpreted by Assyriologists such as S. N. Kramer, J. J. A. van Dijk and E. I. Gordon as proverb collections. More recently, B. Alster has interpreted them as "proverb poems." These interpretations are inadequate in explaining the content, structure and functions of these collections.

It is the thesis of this study that the collections were used by the Old Babylonian schools, primarily at Nippur, for teaching young students the Sumerian language, which was then a learned, non-vernacular language. By studying the various examples of language in the collections, the students would learn to read, write and speak a variety of Sumerian which was rhetorically appropriate to the social context in which it was used among the literate and learned Old Babylonians associated with the schools. Thus, the collections may be called Rhetoric Collections.

There is virtually no explicit evidence concerning the functions of the Rhetoric Collections. There is no known Sumerian name for them and they are not mentioned in any writings contemporary to them. Thus, their functions may be analyzed on the basis of the other school exercises in which context they were used, and by comparison to the techniques of learned language acquisition such as in Hellenistic Egypt (Greek) and Tudor England (Latin).

The genres of discourse of the entries in the collections are discussed in terms of contextual, not textual, analysis, with regards to both structures and functions. It is rarely possible to determine any context in which a given entry was used, so the genres of individual entries are rarely known. However, they probably include fables, incantations, tales, riddles, proverbs and maxims (according to modern folklore terminology), and various forms of non-generic discourse.

The text edition of the hitherto unedited Rhetoric Collection Three is provided as an appendix.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-03, Section: A, page: 0966.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1980.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175.

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.