The Power and the Writing: The Early Scribes of Mesopotamia

Professor Visicato studies all the scribes mentioned in the administrative documents from the Pre-Sargonic through the Sargonic periods, discussing their roles and functions within the institutions in which they worked. This work analyzes the continuity and transformation of the role of the scribe in the 350- to 400-year time span from early ED Ur to the end of the Sargonic period. This study reveals that the earliest scribes were not mere compilers of administrative records. Rather, they were major figures in the management of economic and political power in Mesopotamian society. In reality, the scribe, more than anyone else, seems to have been, from the beginning of the urban revolution, the official who headed administrative organizations and continued in this capacity for centuries in a society undergoing social and economic change.