Scribal training was arduous, all the more so as students were made to learn both Akkadian and the even more obscure Sumerian, originally spoken by the inventors of cuneiform. As one student lamented, in Sumerian, in a Babylonian school text:

The door monitor said, “Why did you go out without my say-so?” and he beat me.
The water monitor said, “Why did you help yourself to water without my say-so?” and he beat me.
The Sumerian monitor said, “You spoke in Akkadian!” and he beat me.
My teacher said, “Your handwriting is not at all good!” and he beat me.

In between beatings, the teachers tried to instill a love of learning in their unhappy pupils. This was a struggle throughout the ancient Near East. “Your heart is denser than an obelisk,” one Egyptian instructor complained to his pupil. “Though I beat you with every kind of stick, you do not listen… Though I spend the day telling you ‘Write,’ it seems like a plague to you. Writing” — the teacher sternly concluded — “is very pleasant!”

~ David Damrosch, The Buried Book (167-168)

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