Childhood in Ancient Mesopotamia

Throughout recorded history, societies have had very different concepts of how children should be raised. They have had greatly varying practices of when a child should give up playing and learning in order to perform adult-style work. As can be seen by children’s small hands used to weave oriental rugs in some parts of India today, the timing of the end of childhood tells us a great deal about a society. It has been argued that, even in the West, the intellectual appreciation of childhood as a special condition did not really emerge until the 18th century C.E. (Phillip Aries, Centuries of Childhood, 1962)

Our first written information on the subject of children comes from the ancient Mesopotamian culture in the Middle East that invented writing. In that body of work, there are many medical cuneiform tablets that refer to newborns and infants but very little indeed on later childhood.

That this ancient Mesopotamian society was concerned about young children’s health is not in doubt. Some of these ancient tablets for use by physicians were detailed obstetrical and pediatric medical texts concerning birth, the physical appearance of newborns, and diseases of young infants. Also, terracotta amulets used by sorcerers for the magical protection of young children have been found in three sizes. These miniature cylinders of clay were hung around a child’s neck. The amulets contain the words of a spell invoking the god Ninurta as a vanquisher of demons. The smallest one is clearly for the neck of a baby and the two other larger sizes suggest older infants and young children.

Ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets were usually written in a mixture of two languages—the Sumerian language of the city-states that introduced writing and the Akkadian language of outside tribes who were among those who later conquered the Sumerians. The Sumerian language is not known to be related to any other language and its speakers disappeared from history around 2000 B.C.E. But the Sumerian language and its writing system lived on as Akkadian scholars continued to copy Sumerian texts as well to adapt this method of writing to their own Semitic tongue. The texts suggest that the Akkadian scribes began inserting Akkadian words into previously existing Sumerian texts. In the medical texts, either the Sumerian word LU2.TUR [literally “small man”] or the Akkadian words šerru or šarru could be used interchangeably when referring to babies and young infants.

There is some indication that these terms applied to children beyond early infancy. In a medical text describing a case of cerebral palsy, the

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child is noted not to be able to stand up in his first, second, third, and fourth years, indicating that the terms extend at least to the age of four years.

One piece of evidence that the words for childhood may have been extended to an even later age group comes from the original version of the flood story that we know from the Bible. The ancient tale of the wanderings of Gilgamesh, probably a Sumerian king of the city-state of Uruk about 3000 B.C.E., contains a description of a flood with uncanny similarity to Noah’s flood. As found on intact cuneiform tablets, Uta-napishti—the Sumerian “Noah”—tells Gilgamesh the story of what happened during the flood. One sentence that Uta-napishti uses to describe the work of the building of the ark is “the child [šerru] carried the pitch.” (Andrew George, The Epic of Gilgamesh, 1999) Although the story is a mythical one, it might have had elements of contemporary reality regarding boat-building in that ancient world.

Now for a child to carry a bucket of hot tar to help build an ark, it is not unreasonable to assume that such a child was older than four years of age. So this sentence might be considered suggestive of two tentative pieces of information about childhood in ancient Mesopotamia: 1) that the words for “baby” were used by scribes to refer to later childhood years and 2) that children might have participated in heavy and dangerous work—carrying a hot bucket of tar—possibly as soon as they were able to manage it.

With such limited material, it is difficult to draw conclusions about childhood in ancient Mesopotamia. However, I think we can say without a doubt that they clearly did not have protective child labor laws!

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