SOLD OUT: Guided Tour of ISAC Museum "Scribes in Mesopotamia"

This tour is sold out. Thousands of objects housed in the ISAC Museum (formerly the Oriental Institute) museum tell the history of Ancient Mesopotamia, and no category of object tells this story in greater detail than the cuneiform tablets. For more than 3,000 years, this writing system was used and transmitted by scribes, who played an important role not only as literati but above all as accountants, administrators, and bureaucrats. Join Ryan Winters on a tour through the permanent gallery and discover how the tablets on display demonstrate the ways in which scribes shaped Mesopotamian history and were shaped by it. From the archaic lexical lists and administrative accounts, through the earliest votive “historical” inscriptions, to later letters and legal documents, and tablets recording literature, and mythology, scribes maintained and guarded their socioeconomic position by creating and curating various kinds of written knowledge. The tour concludes with a visit to the special exhibition “Back to School in Babylonia,” where a school excavated at ancient Nippur demonstrates how scribes were educated during the Old Babylonian period.