Colophons-Scholars · COLOPHONS AND SCHOLARS: TOWARDS A SOCIAL HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE IN BABYLONIA DURING THE FIRST MILLENNIUM BCE
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-09-01 → 2020-08-31
- EU contribution
- €177,599
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-CAR
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
COLOPHONS AND SCHOLARS: TOWARDS A SOCIAL HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE IN BABYLONIA DURING THE FIRST MILLENNIUM BCE
COLOPHONS AND SCHOLARS: TOWARDS A SOCIAL HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE IN BABYLONIA DURING THE FIRST MILLENNIUM BCE Publishable summary The scribal system was the primary vehicle for transmitting and preserving knowledge in Mesopotamia in the first millennium BCE. Writing and copying literary and scientific compositions was part of education in Mesopotamian schools. The entire career of a scholar, from his apprenticeship to becoming an “experienced scribe, who neglects nothing”, can be traced thanks to the colophons that he appended at the bottom of his works throughout his lifetime. Although they called themselves “scribes”, they were in fact scholars and scientists, the keepers of scribal lore, tradition and historical records. Many were affiliated to temples and royal courts, but others practised privately. Their colophons contain a wealth of information on the transfer of knowledge. Firstly, by giving us the name of the scribe, his master, and the tablet’s owner, they shed light on the genealogies, real and imagined, of scholars and on their networks of patronage. Secondly, by indicating the date and place of the tablet’s production, they enable us to trace the transmission of knowledge through space and time. Some 1300 colophons have been preserved on tablets from all major Babylonian cities, ranging in time from the beginning of Assyrian domination in Mesopotamia (ca. 900 BCE) until writing in cuneiform ceased in the first century CE. The potential for ground-breaking research into the social contexts of one of mankind’s longest-living traditions of learning is beyond doubt, but until now this wealth of information has remained largely untapped. Colophons and Scholars project potential for ground-breaking research into the social contexts of one of mankind’s longest-living traditions of learning and scrutinizes this wealth of information that until now has remained largely untapped. My project changed this state-of-art through two interventions: by compiling and publishing a complete digital database of all known first millennium Babylonian colophons https://colophons-and-scholars.web.app/ and by publishing a monograph with their editions. I significantly contribute to an improved infrastructure of the research. By analysing this data, I came to a better understanding of the social process of transmitting knowledge in the ancient Near East.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
My Colophons and Scholars project will undertake an infrastructural intervention into the history and sociology of science urgently required for the one of the longest-living traditions of learning. It will open a major new data set and exploit it for evidence on the production, consumption, and transmission of knowledge in Babylonia. Why are colophons important? The entire lives of scribes, keepers of knowledge, can be traced through the colophons appended at the bottom of their works. As paratexts they offer a hitherto untapped opportunity of understanding the social context of the transmission of knowledge.I will change the state-of-the-art by offering a systematic study of all Neo-Babylonian colophons. Creating an online relational and GIS database and analyzing the colophon data will improve our understanding of Mesopotamian knowledge and give a new impulse for further study. My method combines the approaches of social networks analysis (SNA) with those of the sociology of science, anthropology, archaeology, economic history, and philology. The project will be supervised at Leiden University by Prof. Waerzeggers, the first Assyriologist to adopt SNA for studying Babylonian cuneiform records. It will collaborate closely with her ERC project Persia and Babylonia. Access to the specialist library and cuneiform tablets of the Netherlands Institute of the Near East in Leiden, and working within the multidisciplinary structure of the Leiden Institute of Area Studies offers an ideal environment for conducting my research and disseminating my results. This will be achieved by providing an open access database, publishing a monograph, and organizing international seminars. I expect to acquire proficiency in consulting Neo-Babylonian archives and refine my theoretical training in SNA. Under the supervision of Waerzeggers at LIAS I intend to resume my academic career, which has been interrupted for family reasons, and attain the academic position, to which I aspire.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN · LeidenCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union