A Companion to Ancient Education

W. Martin Bloomer, W. Martin Bloomer

• Editore: Wiley-Blackwell
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118997413
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Literature
• Categoria: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism

A Companion to Ancient Education presents a series of essays from leading specialists in the field that represent the most up-to-date scholarship relating to the rise and spread of educational practices and theories in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

• Reflects the latest research findings and presents new historical syntheses of the rise, spread, and purposes of ancient education in ancient Greece and Rome
• Offers comprehensive coverage of the main periods, crises, and developments of ancient education along with historical sketches of various educational methods and the diffusion of education throughout the ancient world
• Covers both liberal and illiberal (non-elite) education during antiquity
• Addresses the material practice and material realities of education, and the primary thinkers during antiquity through to late antiquity

PART I
Literary and Moral Education in Archaic and Classical Greece

CHAPTER 1
Origins and Relations to the Near East

Mark Griffith

1. General Issues: Neighbors, Greeks, and Cultural Contacts

This chapter aims to set the stage for our investigation (in the next chapter) of the earliest forms of Greek training and education for the young, by providing a sketch of the relevant features of those neighboring societies with which Bronze and early Iron Age “Greeks” are known to have had significant contact. Sometimes it is possible to identify likely connections and derivations for early Greek practices from among those Near Eastern neighbors and predecessors. Even when such direct connections are absent, useful analogies and contrasts may often be drawn. In the case of some of these societies, their educational practices are well known to specialists in those fields, though this knowledge is not widely shared by Classicists. In other cases, the evidence is much scantier altogether, but can be supplemented by comparative material or by plausible inference from later periods. Overall, the remarkable range of institutions and techniques that we find operating in these regions should serve as a valuable reminder of the diversity and complexity of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures out of which Western civilization first began to take shape, and of the many different strands and impulses that came together in the earliest “Greek” educational systems.

It has long be60,638en recognized that during both the Bronze Age (the so-called “Mycenaean” culture, ca. 1650–1200 BCE) and during the Archaic period (ca. 800–450 BCE), Greek architecture, visual art, technology, religion, mythology, music, and literature absorbed multiple influences, at different times and places, from Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Crete, Cyprus, and elsewhere (Vermeule 1972; Hägg and Marinatos 1987; Laffineur and Betancourt 1997; Morris 1992; Burkert 1992; West 1971, 1997; Kingsley 1995; Franklin 2007; Haubold 2013). Those same regions also present us with distinctive administrative and educational programs that were essential to their operations and character, and these will be discussed in what follows. I shall also briefly examine two more distant cultures: the Mesopotamian societies of Sumeria-Babylonia-Assyria and the Vedic-Brahmanic educational system of N. India, whose direct connections with Aegean (and specifically Greek) society during these periods are much less certain. In both cases, their educational systems were so elaborate, long-lasting, and influential that they deserve our close attention, whether or not we can demonstrate their direct impact on Greek culture before the Hellenistic period. By contrast, we know much less about the social structure and institutions of those northern and western neighbors (especially Thrace, Scythia, Italy, and Sicily) with whom Greeks certainly enjoyed extensive cultural contact from at least the eighth century BCE on, through settlement, trade, slavery, mercenary employment, etc. Our ignorance is due in part to the fact that literacy was not yet developed in those regions. But we are still able to recognize in certain cases the origins of some important new kinds of specialized training and instruction that filtered through to other regions of Greece during the Archaic period, sometimes with quite radical consequences.

Scholarly opinions continue to diverge sharply, not only about the nature and degree of contact between these neighboring societies and the earliest Greeks, but also concerning the continuities between Bronze Age (Mycenaean-Minoan) Greek culture and that of the Archaic period. This is not the place to attempt to resolve all these questions (though we will have to consider some particular cases as we proceed, especially in the next chapter). But it would surely be a mistake to attempt any comprehensive account of early “Greek” education without considering the practices of their predecessors and neighbors. So even though parts of this chapter and the next must necessarily be speculative and/or lacunose, the investigation nonetheless seems relevant and worthwhile.

2. Mesopotamia (the Sumero-Babylonian-Assyrian Educational System)

“In the Near East of the 2nd millennium BCE, high culture was Mesopotamian culture … All civilized peoples borrowed the cuneiform system of writing and basic forms of expression from the Akkadian language culture of Mesopotamia” (Beckman 1983 : 97–98). The cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) script was first developed by the Sumerians in the late fourth millennium BCE, and was subsequently taken over by the Babylonians to write their own Akkadian language. A Sumero-Babylonian curriculum of scribal training came into existence toward the end of the third millennium BCE at Nippur, and was extended, perhaps on a smaller scale, to other Mesopotamian cities such as Sippar, Ur, and Kish. This cuneiform-based system was subsequently adopted by several other Near Eastern and Anatolian peoples, remaining in use continuously throughout the Bronze and early Iron Ages (Falkenstein 1954; Kramer 1963: 229–249; Sjöberg 1976: 159–179; Vanstiphout 1979, 1995; Veldhuis 1997, 2014). It is found not only in Mesopotamia itself—throughout the Old Babylonian period (c. 2000–1600), the Kassite dynasty (ca. 1530–1150), and the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (1125–1105), into the era of neo-Assyrian ascendancy (ca. 880–660) and the Chaldean “neo-Babylonian” period (625–539, including Nebuchadnezzar II)—but also, in essentially the same form, in the Bronze Age Hurrian-Hittite, Luwian, and Ugaritic kingdoms of Anatolia and the Levant (discussed later). Even in areas and at periods when Babylon itself was of negligible importance, and even among peoples that spoke quite different languages and already possessed strong cultural traditions of their own, the Sumero-Babylonian scribal system was often superimposed. For over 2000 years, Akkadian (= Old Babylonian, a Semitic language fairly closely related to Hebrew) was thus used as the international language of diplomacy and business, as well as high literary culture, throughout the Near East. So, for example, when the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt ruled the East in the latter half of the second millennium BCE, they did so by means of Babylonian cuneiform. It was not until ca. 900 BCE that, in the Levant and other Western areas, Aramaic superseded Akkadian as the international diplomatic language. In the Achaemenid Persian Empire, both were used, in addition to Old Persian written in cuneiform (see the following text, p. 21).

In general, we may distinguish between two types of teaching within this far-flung and long-lasting Babylonian system: formal schooling and apprenticeship.

Formal schooling follows a more or less set curriculum and is visible in the archaeological record by a concentration of scribal exercises and textbooks. Apprentices, on the other hand, immediately or almost immediately start writing documents, following the example of the master. The most elementary phase of such apprenticeship (the introduction to making tablets and writing cuneiform signs) may not have followed any particular program. The apprentice watched and imitated, the master checked and corrected … in the same way as one would learn to be a potter, a farmer, a musician, or a government official. Apprenticeship may be visible in the cuneiform record in badly shaped tablets with random signs, in accounts that feature oddly round numbers or have vital information missing, or in letters that exist in multiple duplicates. (Veldhuis 2014)

Examples of the curriculum for the full-scale Babylonian scribal program, known as Eduba (literally “Tablet House,” or School), are preserved from the Old Babylonian period (c. 2000–1600) at Nippur, Ur, Sippar, and Kish, each containing thousands of tablets of remarkable uniformity and systematic completeness, written in over 500 different hands. The subject, and to some degree the language, of instruction in these school tablets is Sumerian, a non-Semitic language that had not been spoken for centuries but that was regarded as the proper conduit for many of the most revered and traditional texts and rituals. Thus, those students who undertook not simply to learn basic writing in order to conduct their family's daily business, but to become true members of the scribal class, learned first how to make the wedge-shaped (cuneiform) signs; then to write out and memorize lists of morphemes, phonemes, proper names, and words, both common and rare, with their Akkadian meanings (Vanstiphout 1979; Veldhuis 1997, 2006). After intensive study of Sumerian grammar, the most advanced students finally proceeded to the composition of “real” Sumerian, and to the reading and interpretation of classic Sumerian poetical and literary texts, including details of theology, astrology, and ritual. The whole Eduba system at its highest levels was thus radically bilingual, constantly switching back and forth, even within the same text, between Sumerian and Akkadian. (In some periods and regions, however, especially in the less ambitious schools, there was much less attention paid to Sumerian, and the focus was more on the practical use of Akkadian; Van den Hout 2008; Cohen 2009; Veldhuis 2011.)

The assigned readings and practice exercises, in addition to lists of gods, technical terms, divination and legal procedures, etc., included proverbs and such canonical classics as Gilgamesh, as well as other epics, hymns, and wisdom texts. The rudiments of counting, accounting, and measurement were also taught (in cuneiform Akkadian); and some students went on to study the preparation of administrative documents, including various aspects of agronomy, trade, law, and letter writing. Advanced students would also copy actual inscriptions by former kings, real and imaginary, incantation texts, and o...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• PART I: Literary and Moral Education in Archaic and Classical Greece
• PART II: Accounts of Systems
• PART III: The Spread and Development of Greek Schooling in the Hellenistic Era
• PART IV: The Roman Transformation
• PART V: Theories and Themes of Education
• PART VI: Non-Literary and Non-Elite Education
• Index
• End User License Agreement