Babylonian school began in early puberty, but what is really remarkable is the reason we know this. A clay tablet containing a basic school exercise of the kind that students would be given early in their education was found with a set of teeth marks in its upper right corner. The student, whoever this was, must have tried to take a bite of the tablet after finishing the exercise. We can only speculate as to why. Since the students at this level were still learning how to write, which in cuneiform is done by pressing a reed stylus into wet clay, this student must have been thinking about the imprints that solids leave on surfaces, and perhaps it was only natural to experiment by biting it. Or the student may have been thinking about death. According to Babylonian belief, shades in the underworld were condemned to "eat dust and live on clay." Perhaps our unnamed student was nagged by fears of the afterlife, and thought to test how bad it would be. Either way, the tablet has proved helpful to modern scholars. Based on the shape and size of the bite marks, philologists were able to determine the age of the student: he or she had reached early pubescence, and this gives us a clue as to when Old Babylonian schoolchildren began their studies
- Sophus Helle, Enheduana
