The Sumerian Proverb-Game: Rhetoric, Play, and Political Performance

Abstract: I argue that lists of Sumerian proverbs (mostly ca. 1800 BCE) were not anthologized either as collections of wise sayings nor as curricular tools, but as handbooks used for competitive praise-and-blame debates in intermediate scribal education. Positing a fundamentally dialogic purpose for the collections points us towards rhetorical performance as a goal of Mesopotamian education. A model of the game illustrates how the collections had the capacity to support a wide variety of rhetorical maneuvers. Both comparative and culture-specific evidence demonstrate how the "mixed" material of Sumerian proverbs and the rules it taught were appropriate for the instruction of young Babylonians in the politics of formal speech.