THE BABYLONIAN PERIOD
The school was, as Scheil says, not large but very well situated, facing and not far from the temple and, if small, it had at least a certain amplitude, as its rooms were four metres high. One of the tablets found recited that he who excels at school shall shine like the sun. It was in this building that Scheil found, in one of the rooms, in a sort of rectangular bin, an enormous compact mass of tablets of all sorts, Sumerian hymns, syllabaries, contracts, all of about the time of Hammurabi and many of them giving evidence of having been used as exercises. He then searched every corner of the building and found fine tablets in all the rooms but none in the adjoining rooms of other buildings. It seemed clear, therefore, that here was a distinct school and school library.
From the libraries of Nippur more than 60,000 tablets, it is alleged, have been so far recovered in several archives and only
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