Love Letter from Uruk: How to become a Scribe in Mesopotamia

Who could have guessed that being abandoned in Sumer in 2000BC would be so much fun?

Even learning to work in the fields is fun - sort of - retrospectively.

But it's meeting the people - talking to them - listening to the stories - being IN the stories. Help!

It so happens that 6-year-old Leqi has to get into school - if he doesn't, our future might never happen. How is Debra going to help with that?

At school it isn't about listening to the stories anymore, it's about learning to write them - so this is how we've come by the stories, the texts, the prayers, the songs from long ago.

School also has to be paid for. And the finances of a peasant family living in Ancient Uruk don't stretch to school fees. So this feisty family gets to work. Helping an old friend who's son has just murdered his brother (what?), makes it possible for Nana's son to marry a young lady with resources - it's going well. In the meantime our budding scribe has to evade the teacher's cane while he learns the stories and writings that he is going to preserve for us. He has to meet the people worth knowing, Abraham and Gilgamesh. Fortunately Urukians don't need to be taught to speak, volubly and loudly and all the time.

Is this budding scribe going to become a decent human being who writes the kind of stories that we want to listen to?

This immaculately-structured collision with our most ancient literatures, written with warmth and humor, will appeal to any lover of books, and ancient history, and the beginnings of the Old Testament.