A Scribe in his City: the virtual life of a Mesopotamian scribe in an Early Dynastic city

Gebhard J. SELZ
(Oriental Institute, Vienna University, Austria)

The lecture, dedicated to the memory of Sam Paley who made such important contributions to the virtual archaeological world, reconstruct some days in the life of am Mesopotamian scribe of the 3^rd millennium B.C.E.
Based on written sources and on pictorial representation an attempt is made the re-create the atmosphere and the major events structuring the daily life of a Sumerian master scribe.Often, historiography restricts itself to major cultural features and to the chronologies of major (public) events. A glimpse on daily life is, of course, in many respects speculative, however there are enough extant sources available for a quite reliable reconstruction.