Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.--Harvard University, 2003) presented under the title: The transmission and reception of Mesopotamian scholarly texts at the city of Emar.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-266) and indexes.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Schools, Scribes, and Scholars -- The Syrian Scribes -- Excursus: The Munbāqa-Ekalte Scribes -- The Syro-Hittite Scribes and Officials, Hittite Officials, and Foreign Scribes -- The Syrian Scholarly Scribes and the Syrian Tradition Scholarly Compositions -- The Syro-Hittite Scholarly Scribes and the Syro-Hittite Tradition Scholarly Compositions -- Concluding Remarks -- Bibliography -- Index of Personal Names -- Index of Place Names -- Index Locorum.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

The city of Emar, modern Tell Meskene in Syria, is one of the most important sites of the western ancient Near East during the Late Bronze Age that have yielded cuneiform tablets. The discovery of more than one thousand tablets and tablet fragments assures Emar's position, along with Bogazkoy-Hattusa and Ras-Shamra-Ugarit, as a major scribal center. Ephemeral documents such as wills or sale contracts, texts about rituals and cultic festivals, school texts and student exercises, and inscribed seals and their impressions enable reconstruction of the Emar scribal school institution and provide materials for investigation into the lives of more than fifty scribes whose works were found in the city. The aim of this book is to place Emar's scribal school institution within its social and historical context, to observe the participation of its teachers and students in the study of the school curriculum, to investigate the role of the scribes in the daily life of the city (in particular within the administration), and to evaluate the school's and its members' position within the network of similar institutions throughout the ancient Near East.