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Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid Profile picture
@Moudhy
Jul 15, 2021 • 9 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
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A clay tablet made by a young scribal student who was practicing the "A" sign 𒀀 over and over again at school almost 4,000 years ago in Babylonia.

Be still my heart 🥺
A Babylonian scribal student practicing the sign "DINGIR" 𒀭 which looks like a star sometime between 2000 and 1600 BCE
This Babylonian student got bored and drew a doodle on his school exercise tablet ~4,000 years ago in Iraq
This Babylonian student left his now almost 4,000-year-old fingerprints on what looks like maybe a math exercise text from ancient Iraq
Compare this work of a young Babylonian scribal student practicing signs with that of a seasoned student writing out a mock lawsuit in cuneiform 🥺🥺
A Babylonian artist in the making several millennia ago in a scribal school in what is now Iraq.

On one side of a clay tablet, there are writing exercises and on the other side, this lovely drawing of a fish and a goat (I think) 🧡
I love these so much 🧡
All of these Babylonian school tablets are from the UCLA special collections, and you can peruse them here oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/1…
I somehow broke the thread so here’s the rest of it, complete with kids’ fingerprints and drawings

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More from @Moudhy

Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid Profile picture
Mar 3
Some really old stuff to start the week. Ancient bricks may seem boring, but there is more to them than mud and straw.

A short thread with a plot twist at the end about these building blocks of life in ancient Mesopotamia from my book, Between Two River. Photo of a square shaped mud brick in excellent condition with a stamped cuneiform inscription near the centre
Bricks in ancient Mesopotamia were sometimes stamped with cuneiform signs using an ancient precursor to a printing press.

A mould with a cuneiform inscription on it, including the name of the king behind construction work, was pressed into wet mud bricks to save time and effort Photo of a mould with cuneiform signs on it that was once pressed into mud bricks
Photo of a mould with a cuneiform inscription on it that was once pressed into wet mud. The inscription is 13 lines long and there is a break along the top right
People weren’t the only ones to stamp mud bricks with the names of their kings and other details.

Bricks were left to dry in the sun, leaving them vulnerable to the paw prints of passing animals, including dogs. Photo of a square shaped mud brick with an inscription stamped near the centre and two partial paw prints below the stamped inscription
Photo of a square shaped mud brick with an inscription stamped near the centre and two paw prints to the left of the inscription
Read 8 tweets
Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid Profile picture
Feb 28
Some jokes and humour on clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia to brighten your day.

It's hard to know what would have made people laugh so long ago, but literature, folktales, and proverbs are full of examples of what we find pretty funny.
This story where a Babylonian jester makes up fake, gross menus to parody an elaborate feast.

Ingredients include dog poop, donkey butts, and the very specific egg of a goose from a chicken coop on a sand bed. Month of Kislimu, what is your food? —You shall eat donkey dung on bitter garlic and chaff in spoiled milk. Month of Tebetu, what is your food? —You shall eat the egg of a goose from the poultry house resting on a bed of sand and a decoction of Euphratean seaweed. Month of Sabatu, what is your food? -You shall eat still hot bread and the buttock of a donkey stallion stuffed with dog poop and the excrement of dust flies.
This folktale features three thirsty friends who can’t decide how to use their ox, cow, or wagon to get water.

The king turns to a wise woman to solve the problem, and in the end, they all lose because no one was willing to risk anything to retrieve the water. Photo of a clay tablet fragment that is broken in such a way that it looks like a jagged triangle. The cuneiform signs on the fragment are well-preserved
Photo of an excerpt of a literary texts showing lines 17 to 25. On the left column are the Sumerian words, and on the right column is the English translation which is as follows: The king took counsel with the cloister woman (and said: 18. "Three young men went before (me and said:) 19. 'Our liege, we are ox drivers. 20. The ox belongs to one man, the cow belongs to one man, and the wagon belongs to one man. 21. 'We became thirsty and we had no water. 22. 'If one could provide the ox-driver with wa-ter, then let us drink! said (two of them). 23. "What if my ox is devoured by a li...
Read 7 tweets
Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid Profile picture
Feb 19
If it looks like there are two different fonts on this clay tablet from ancient Babylon, that’s because there are.

In December 603 BCE, a young scribe named Balāṭa made a faithful copy of a far more ancient inscription of Sîn-Kashid who had ruled Uruk over 1,000 years earlier. Photo of a broken clay tablet fragment seen from the front, back, and sides. There is a British Museum watermark at the bottom of the image.
The top part of this tablet is an inscription in the Sumerian language, dead for centuries by the time Balāṭa the junior scribe made this copy of it.

The signs are larger and reflect an older “font”. Was he copying from an original that was over 1,000 years old to him? Photo of the top half of a cuneiform tablet that shows 5 full lines of cuneiform
Cuneiform gets more streamlined or stylised in later eras.

In the bottom part of this tablet, Balāṭa “signs” the copy and gives a date equivalent to December 3, 603 BCE during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.

He uses the contemporary cuneiform “font” (and Akkadian language) Photo of the bottom part of a cuneiform tablet that shows 5 lines of cuneiform
Read 5 tweets
Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid Profile picture
Feb 13
How to make glass in ancient Assyria. First, you grind your ingredients separately, which can include certain stones, roasted carnelian-coloured seashells, “white plant”, and salicornia ashes. Then “You mix them together” and place them in a cold kiln with four openings Black and white photo of the top part of a broken cuneiform tablet with many cracks and missing portions
“You burn a good, smokeless fire. You remove the (glass) as soon as it (begins to) turn white. You cool it off and grind it down.” Several stages in the production of glass, as described in a broken clay tablet from the Library of Ashurbanipal. Photo of a long rectangular cuneiform tablet in portrait mode. It has several cracks running through it, and is made up of several fragments put together. Near the centre, a whole portion is missing where a chunk of clay has flaked off the surface. The background is black
Photo of a long rectangular cuneiform tablet in portrait mode. It has several cracks running through it, and is made up of several fragments put together. The background is black
Making glass in ancient Assyria was not easy. You had to repeat several stages of grinding, mixing, heating, cooling. At times, you had wait till the mixture glowed white, red, or yellow before the next step.

“When (the glass) glows yellow, you stir it once in your direction” Image
Read 7 tweets
Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid Profile picture
Feb 10
I am often moved by how cuneiform tablets give glimpses into the lives of everyday people.

One of my favourites is of a physician name Rabâ-sha-Marduk who lived in the 1200s BCE. This medical therapy for headaches ("seizing of the temple") is signed by him Photo of a cuneiform tablet from the front, top, and back. The tablet is broken diagonally, but the text that survives is well-preserved and divided by rulings
A receipt for "high quality dates...for his sacrifice" names a healer or physician named Rabâ-sha-Marduk.

The tablet is tiny and covered in fingerprints. It feels like a rushed, messy record of a transaction, but one that leaves behind a name of someone we know did medicine Photo of a small, rectangular clay tablet covered in relatively well-preserved cuneiform signs. Fingerprints are visible on much of the tablet. The colour is beige with some spots on it.
But what happened to the Babylonian physician named Rabâ-sha-Marduk who wrote medical therapies and bought dates?

He ended up working in the Hittite Empire. Around the same time, there were rumours among Babylonian royalty of a physician dying in the employ of the Hittite kings Photo of a ruin with two walls made of large smooth stones. They converge on an entrance flanked by stone statues of lions. In the distance are more stone features, mountains and clouds.
Read 5 tweets
Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid Profile picture
Feb 9
In this ancient Assyrian letter, astronomers complain they can’t do their jobs or teach astronomy “because of the ilku-duty”, a type of taxation in the form of labour.

“we cannot keep the watch of the king, and the pupils do not learn the scribal craft” cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/3342…Photo of a portrait oriented cuneiform tablet
Photo of a portrait oriented cuneiform tablet
Astronomers in ancient Assyria were sometimes exempt from performing the “ilku”, or tax in the form of labour, and that wasn’t always a good thing.

Those excused from state-mandated labour to carry on their scholarship in service of the king sometimes faced violence. Photo of a stone relief showing 5 adults and one child walking in profile. They all face to the right. Some bold bags or other objects. They are likely deportees being moved from a conquered city. The colour of the stone is reddish brown
“at this very moment, I build a storeroom in the Review Palace with my brothers, and the townspeople…have killed my farmer and harass me”, writes Nabû-iqīsha from the city of Borsippa.

People were angry enough at this astronomer for the tax exemption that they killed someone. Photo of a cuneiform tablet from many angles including front, back, top, bottom, and sides. The tablet is in landscape mode, and the cuneiform signs are very clear
Read 5 tweets

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