A few weeks ago, we hosted a two-day symposium on “Deviant Readings: Local and Communal Variation in the Sumerian Reading Tradition” here at the MSH Mondes in Nanterre: for those interested, you can find the program here. As the Marie Curie project ScriPTS draws to a close, the symposium was specifically meant to address what variation in cuneiform readings look like once we leave the big centers in Nippur or Nineveh, and whether that variation give us evidence of something like a localized reading community, or a community of practice. I can’t thank the participants enough for the time and effort they put into their papers.
Though the papers of the symposium were looking specifically at Sumerian, the topic does take me back to one of the big questions of first millennium Mesopotamian writing. Posed roughly à la Baldrick from Blackadder Goes Forth, this might go something like this:
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