GODS IN THE CLASSROOM: RELIGION AND EDUCATION IN 1 ST MILLENNIUM BCE BABYLONIA

While there was no separate “religious education” program in ancient Mesopotamia, the formal scribal curricula reveal several discrete learning outcomes related to religion that were conveyed through the selection of texts scribal students copied and excerpted. Using case studies from 1 st millennium BCE Babylonia, this article elucidates some of these learning outcomes, including divine names and characteristics of the gods, Babylon (and Nippur) as a religious center, religious spaces and the temple cult, and the relationships between gods and humans. These all served to instill the next generation of imperial scribes, specialists, and administrators with a common set of religious traditions and ideology.