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This volume—the companion book to the special exhibition Back to School in Babylonia of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago—examines education in the Old Babylonian period through the lens of House F in Nippur, excavated jointly by the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1950s and widely believed to have been a scribal school. The book’s twenty essays offer a state-of-the-art synthesis of research on the history of House F and the educational curriculum documented on the many tablets discovered there, while the catalog’s five chapters present the 126 objects included in the exhibition, the vast majority of them cuneiform tablets.

Contents
Foreword. Theo van den Hout
Foreword. Eleanor Robson
Preface. Marc Maillot
Acknowledgments. Susanne Paulus
List of Contributors
Part I: Essays
1. Back to School in Babylonia: The Aims of Babylonian Education. Susanne Paulus
2. Old Babylonian Nippur in Its Environmental and Historical Settings. Hervé Reculeau
3. The Archaeology of Nippur’s House F and Its Neighborhood. Augusta McMahon
4. Living the Edubbaʾa: School as Sensory Experience and Social Identity. Madeline Ouimet
5. Economic Life in the Scribal Quarter of Nippur. Anne Goddeeris
6. Literacy in the Old Babylonian Period. Dominique Charpin
7. Reconstructing the Elementary Nippur Curriculum. Niek Veldhuis
8. Learning the Basics: The First Steps at School. Klaus Wagensonner
9. Complex Lists: Between Didactics and Erudition. Marta Díaz Herrera
10. Bilingualism and Akkadian. Jay Crisostomo
11. Sumerian Grammar for Babylonians. Colton G. Siegmund
12. Sumerian Proverbs. William A. Younger
13. What Did They Learn about Mathematics? Barbora Wichterlová
14. Practicing Law. Susanne Paulus
15. The Decad and Scribal Errors. Paul Delnero
16. Adventures in a Legendary Past: Tales of Long-Ago Kings as Cultural Education. Jane Gordon
17. Learning History. Piotr Michalowski
18. What Did They Learn about Myths and Religion? Christopher Metcalf
19. Learning Rhetoric through Sumerian Disputations. Catherine Mittermayer
20. What Did They Learn about Women? Jana Matuszak
Part II: Catalog
21. Discovering a School in Nippur. Madeline Ouimet and Susanne Paulus, with Laura D'Alessandro and Alison Whyte
22. School Life in House F. Marta Díaz Herrera, Jane Gordon, Danielle Levy, Madeline Ouimet, Susanne Paulus, and Ryan D. Winters
23. The Curriculum: From Signs to Literature. Marta Díaz Herrera, Jane Gordon, Madeline Ouimet, Susanne Paulus, and Colton G. Siegmund
24. Topics of Education. Marta Díaz Herrera, Jane Gordon, Jana Matuszak, Madeline Ouimet, Susanne Paulus, Colton G. Siegmund, Barbora Wichterlová, and Ryan D. Winters
25. After School. Susanne Paulus, Colton G. Siegmund, and Ryan D. Winters
List of Compositions
Concordance of Museum Registration Numbers
Bibliography

• ISAC Museum Publications 1
• Chicago: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, 2023
• ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-61491-098-5
• ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61491-099-2
• Pp. 480 (xxii + 458)
• Hardcover, 8 x 10 inches
• $39.95