Ancient Knowledge Networks : A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia

With Ancient Knowledge Networks , Eleanor Robson investigates how networks of knowledge enabled cuneiform intellectual culture to adapt and endure over the course of five world empires until its eventual demise in the mid-first century BC. Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments, and scholarship in the ancient Middle East, Robson focuses on two regions where cuneiform script was the predominant writing medium: Assyria, north of modern-day Syria and Iraq, and Babylonia, south of modern-day Baghdad. In doing so, she also studies Assyriological and historical method, both now and over the past two centuries, asking how the field has shaped and been shaped by the academic concerns and fashions of the day. Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book about how knowledge travels, in minds and bodies as well as in writings. It explores the forms knowledge takes and the meanings it accrues, and how these meanings are shaped by the peoples who use it.Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments and literate scholarship in the ancient Middle East of the first millennium BC, Eleanor Robson focuses on two regions where cuneiform script was the predominant writing medium: Assyria in the north of modern-day Syria and Iraq, and Babylonia to the south of modern-day Baghdad. She investigates how networks of knowledge enabled cuneiform intellectual culture to endure and adapt over the course of five world empires until its eventual demise in the mid-first century BC. In doing so, she also studies Assyriological and historical method, both now and over the past two centuries, asking how the field has shaped and been shaped by the academic concerns and fashions of the day. Above all, Ancient Knowledge Networks is an experiment in writing about ‘Mesopotamian science', as it has often been known, using geographical and social approaches to bring new insights into the intellectual history of the world's first empires.Praise for Ancient Knowledge Networks'In this important new book, Eleanor Robson offers a rich and fascinating sketch of cuneiform intellectual culture in Assyria and Babylonia from the late thirteenth century through the second half of the first millennium BC....The book will be of interest not only to specialists in ancient Near Eastern studies but also to ancient historians and archaeologists studying other world areas and eras in which ancient writing systems developed.'American Antiquity'A thoughtful, well written, modern approach to the study of cuneiform culture. An essential read for those of us studying any aspect of cuneiform writing.'Archaeological Review from Cambridge'This is an engaging volume that takes an original approach to understanding the agents of knowledge networks and the social, geographical and cultural factors that shaped them.'Antiquity'The second chapter...is a useful chapter for students and scholars of the Ancient Near East... Arguments are based on excellent studies of archives and salient observations about ancient communities elucidated from scanty but revealing evidence. Where the book innovates, however, is in tying all of these scholars and knowledge together.'Journal of Near Eastern Studies'The book complicates and humanises the categories that have streamlined the study of cuneiform scholarship. In its own words, this is a book about ‘how knowledge travels'through the people who carry it, their writings, their responsibilities and their benefactors – human and divine. It animates the lives of scholars through their movements, their works and the movements of their works, until the end of cuneiform culture in Babylon and Uruk. Ancient Knowledge Networks is a study of the history of knowledge that restores context to text – an invaluable re-evaluation of the sources to the modern scholars of Assyria and Babylonia.'History Today'Eleanor Robson's Ancient Knowledge Networks offers a fascinating portrait of the social and geographical life of cuneiform scholarship, scribal learning, or ṭupšarrūtu. It examines high cuneiform culture in the terms of the texts'own taxonomies of knowledge, while taking full account of relevant archaeological evidence and employing micro- and macro-geographical analysis. A lucid presentation of new ideas concerning the Assyrian and Babylonian first-millennium intelligentsia and their patrons, Ancient Knowled Contents 8 List of illustrations 10 List of tables 16 Acknowledgements 17 1 Introduction 26 Mesopotamian science, cuneiform scholarship 26 Histories of science, geographies of knowledge 30 2 From ‘Ashurbanipal’s Library’ and the ‘stream of tradition’ to new approaches to cuneiform scholarship 35 ‘Ashurbanipal’s Library’: From Nineveh to London 37 New sources for ancient scholarship 48 Sourcing the ‘stream of tradition’ 51 New views of the past 55 Books and texts 59 Geographies and communities 63 Conclusions 67 3 Trust in Nabu? Assyrian royal attitudes to court scholarship 74 The origins of Assyrian court scholarship 75 Nabu, god of scribes and magnates 78 Sargon’s adoption of Nabu 92 Nabu’s changing fortunes in the early seventh century 100 The final decades 104 Conclusions 111 4 The writing-board was at my house: Scholarly and textual mobility in seventh-century Assyria 123 Geographies of royal scholarship under Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal 125 The uses of scholarly tablets and compositions in Neo-Assyrian court scholarship 137 Collection, acquisition and edition at the royal court 144 Beyond the royal scholarly network: Assur and Huzirina 153 Conclusions 163 5 Grasping the righteous sceptre: Nabu, scholarship and the kings of Babylonia 174 Babylonian royal attitudes to Nabu 176 A fight for survival: The ‘end of archives’ and the end of royal patronage 198 Loss of royal favour: The view from Uruk 205 Conclusions 217 6 At the gate of Eanna: Babylonian scholarly spaces before and after the early fifth century 229 Scholars in temples in the long sixth century bc 230 Scholarly tablet collections in the temple 235 Scholars outside the temples in the long sixth century 241 Surviving the anti-Achaemenid revolts: Who, where and how? 246 Intercity knowledge exchange: The shrinking scholarly networks of later Babylonia 260 Conclusions 268 7 Conclusions: Towards a social geography of cuneiform scholarship 278 The social 279 The geographical 283 The cuneiform 287 The scholarly 290 The historical 292 Bibliography 297 Index 328 Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book about how knowledge travels, in minds and bodies as well as in writings. It explores the forms knowledge takes and the meanings it accrues, and how these meanings are shaped by the peoples who use it.

Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments and literate scholarship in the ancient Middle East of the first millennium BC, Eleanor Robson focuses on two regions where cuneiform script was the predominant writing medium: Assyria in the north of modern-day Syria and Iraq, and Babylonia to the south of modern-day Baghdad. She investigates how networks of knowledge enabled cuneiform intellectual culture to endure and adapt over the course of five world empires until its eventual demise in the mid-first century BC. In doing so, she also studies Assyriological and historical method, both now and over the past two centuries, asking how the field has shaped and been shaped by the academic concerns and fashions of the day. Above all,Ancient Knowledge Networks is an experiment in writing about 'Mesopotamian science', as it has often been known, using geographical and social approaches to bring new insights into the intellectual history of the world's first empires.

Praise for Ancient Knowledge Networks

'Eleanor Robson's Ancient Knowledge Networks offers a fascinating portrait of the social and geographical life of cuneiform scholarship, scribal learning, orṭupšarrūtu. It examines high cuneiform culture in the terms of the texts' own taxonomies of knowledge, while taking full account of relevant archaeological evidence and employing micro- and macro-geographical analysis. A lucid presentation of new ideas concerning the Assyrian and Babylonian first-millennium intelligentsia and their patrons,Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book for cuneiformists as well as non-specialist readers outside the ancient Middle Eastern fields.' - Francesca Rochberg, University of California, Berkeley Ancient Knowledge Networks is a book about how knowledge travels, in minds and bodies as well as in writings. It explores the forms knowledge takes and the meanings it accrues, and how these meanings are shaped by the peoples who use it. Addressing the relationships between political power, family ties, religious commitments and literate scholarship in the ancient Middle East of the first millennium BC, Eleanor Robson focuses on two regions where cuneiform script was the predominant writing medium: Assyria in the north of modern-day Syria and Iraq, and Babylonia to the south of modern-day Baghdad. She investigates how networks of knowledge enabled cuneiform intellectual culture to endure and adapt over the course of five world empires until its eventual demise in the mid-first century BC. In doing so, she also studies Assyriological and historical method, both now and over the past two centuries, asking how the field has shaped and been shaped by the academic concerns and fashions of the day. Above all, Ancient Knowledge Networks is an experiment in writing about ?Mesopotamian science?, as it has often been known, using geographical and social approaches to bring new insights into the intellectual history of the world?s first empires.