The articles collected in this book were read as papers during a
symposium held in Leiden in December 2008. This symposium focused on
Theory and Practice of Knowledge Transfer and the papers discuss many
aspects of this subject. Most articles deal with ancient Mesopotamia,
but two of them look at Europe (classical antiquity and the Middle Ages)
and one discusses a case from Mali. Most papers center around past and
present relationships between orality and literacy in the societies
discussed.
An important aspect is the way knowledge was
conveyed from master to student and the supposed transition from an oral
tradition to a tradition that was predominantly based on writing. For
this, much attention is paid to the many school texts that have been
discovered in Mesopotamia and the peripheral areas to the west. Also,
not every society made use of writing and at times special conditions
seem to have fostered its adoption. Classical antiquity and medieval
Europe provide valuable parallels for the data collected for
Mesopotamia, as does a modern case from Africa.
Finally,
other aspects, such as scribal conventions and what we can learn from
mistakes made by scribes, give us a better insight in how the scribes
accomplished their task and how students acquired their knowledge.