Unfortunately, little is known of the scribes responsible for the works in the present volume, apart from, in a few cases, their names, official positions, and the names and official positions of their forefathers, recorded in the colophons of tablets (cf. especially nos. 10 and 39). However, the existence of the texts themselves, and of the Assurbanipal libraries, testifies to the prestige of the scribal art. Colophons of Assurbanipal library tablets sometimes contain the information that they are for the king's own reading (as in no. 47, rev. 7). Assurbanipal himself even boasts: "I study stone inscriptions from before the flood, which are difficult, obscure and complicated! " (Streck Asb 256:18). In no. 12, obv. 8, a text possibly to be associated with Assurbanipal (see discussion below), the speaker claims to have even as a child longed to sit in the tablet house. In no. 2, rev. 22, Assurbanipal's acrostic hymn in praise of Marduk, one can scarcely doubt that the "humble, constantly praying scholar" is Assurbanipal himself. In view of the Babylonian associations already referred to, it is interesting to note in no. 49 the reference to Babylonian scribes from Borsippa, dwelling in the city of Assur. In the first text presented, "the writing on the celestial firmament" is even used as part of a metaphor describing the might of the chief god of Assyria.
But the life of a scribe was not always easy,[[9]] and there was much competition and jockeying for position, circumstances lying behind an allusion in no. 32, rev. 33-34.[[10]] In the final analysis, the achievement of the scribes was in the literature which they produced. The contents of the present book confirm a statement made some half a century ago by a modern scholar who himself trod the pavements and entered the palaces, temples, and private houses of Assur and Babylon. Walter Andrae wrote:" (They) were not simply scribes, but philosophical poets, in whose oratory and writing the king found pleasure."[[11]]
9 Cf. S. Parpola, "The Forlorn Scholar," in F. Rochberg-Halton (ed.), Language, Literature, and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner (1987), p. 257ff.
10 This allusion is discussed by W. von Soden, ZA 43 (1936), p. 11.
11 W. Andrae, Das wiedererstandene Assur. Zweite durchgesehene und erweiterte Auflage herausgegeben von B. Hrouda (1977), p. 19.
Alasdair Livingstone
Alasdair Livingstone, 'The Scribes', Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea, SAA 3. Original publication: Helsinki, Helsinki University Press, 1989; online contents: SAAo/SAA03 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa03/sourcesandattribution/thescribes/]