| Show THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE SUNDAY MORNING DECEMBER 25? 1938 3 An accpunt of the 'modern' office set-u- p of 2000 B C which had everything but typewriters telephones and chewing gum This 'signature was not the man's name It was his personal trade curiously enough mark or insignia Usually it was a religious He stamped it and picture or a social scene the hired help who had' studied writing added the cuneiform marks that spelled the name world's first business girls got their training by schooling not unlike ours Scribes studied with private teachers or at schools attached to the temples One very benches schoolroom with of rows complete long has been unearthed by French archaeologists Lesson books and exercise papers were clay tablets of course Drs Chiera and Cameron point out one typical exercise paper which was shaped like a round dinner roll flat on one side and curved rpHE By Emily C Davis the typist is as old as TOOTS not precisely bill of sale The History of course There were no typewriters in the good old days of Hammurabi or Nebuchadnezzar and However those girls had different pet names are small details Very small The big point is girls actually did get a chance to do office work in ancient cities But alas and alack for feminism The Babylonian girl secretary was not much of a A 4000 years old at Field Museum of Natural clay tablet right is a contract from Kish ancient Babylonian-cit- y The broken envelope left provided a tamper-proageless receptacle for the document These specimens were collected by the Field Museum-Oxfor- d University joint expedition to Mesopotamia of on the Other Teacher’s copy was neatly written on the flat side Pupil tried to imitate it In the course of a school on the rounded side day the rounded side could be erased by flat tening it and used again many times "before the clay copy book became dry and worn out One fact about the Babylonian office girl we do not know And that is what she wore to work A modern writer bored with tons of clay memorandums and routine business accounts left by the ancients once made the witticism that he was not interested in the laundry lists of' the ancient Sumerians But Chiera and Cameron couldn't agree In the first place they argue there are no clay laundry lists because people washed their linen at home But Assyriologists wish there were For 1 success Generally when the big business man said'®' it was a man secretary who reached for a brick —to write on of course Inference that Babylonian office girls did not make good is drawn in the book “They Wrote on Clay” which Dr Edward Chiera at the University of Chicago’s Ori- ental Institute left unfinished at death and which has been completed by his associate Dr George G Cameron (University of Chicago i Press) Not to keep you in suspense the Assyri- ologists cast no slurs on spelling or accuracy of the world's first office girls Nor does it appear that girl scribes — they were “scribes" in those days —were too frail to bear up under brick After all most clay correspondence and files documents in ordinary use were quite small No the evidence is simply that while there were a good many scribes in the ancient business districts apparently only a few of the "Take a letter” Ancient Babylonia had its fair and they were remarkably like their modern sisters the stenographers of today- - scribes scribes were women What everybody thought about the situation it was a sore point with Babylonian women and whether they felt discriminated against — that is not clear yet And we shall whether simple little addition to a number just as checki But there was a way of are raised today to get along without knowing whether Babylonian secretaries married the boss thereby reducing the feminine quota of scribes And there is the labor turnover angle and Babylonian- unemployment which might have been foiling that They had tamper-proenvelopes The clay envelope system is really more than modern We have notlfng like it Scribes had to be expert at making envelopes But simple modeling in clay was second nature to a people who made dishes idols toys and office supplies all out of the good clay that the rivers deposited so generously along the banks have factors— there they are — a few ancient career-girlThey make Babylonia seem more modern than ever Still of every year The efficient secretary could make an envelope in no time by taking a piece of clay from stock and flattening it over the document in a neat cover Then he or she copied the document word for word on the envelope and all the contracting parties had to sign it again Result: a The cleverest system crook couldn't open one of those clay envelopes without tearing it Honest archaeologists have tried to put themselves in the place of an imaginary Babylonian crook but never have they succeeded in opening one of these envelopes Babylonia was amazingly modern more clay tablets that scholars decipher the more clearly we realize that business was conducted “as usual” way back in 2000 B G Babylonians were then already It wai their leaders in finance and trade And down through their history and specialty that of the Assyrians business practices in Mesopotamia were— well there is no better word for it — they were modern intact Babylonians believed even more than we do Nor could anyone rashly tear open a clay in putting things in writing They had a law envelope and expect to make a new one for the as early as 2000 B G requiring every busienclosure The very nature of the clay would ness deal put in writing and signed and witoutwit him nessed Even the smallest transaction couldn’t Explained by Drs Chiera and Catoeron it be ended until a scribe was called in to make was like this: A fresh clay document was a proper brick record of it moist’ But when it dried in the course-o- f a Fpr contrast Dr Chiera V book calls attenfew days it would shrink to about a fifth tion to how recent in our civilization is a simismaller After that no envelSjSe co’uld be put lar effort to prevent frauds by requiring written " around it Try it and you find that the wet records: clay envelope which has to shrink pushes “It was ’not Until two and one-hacenturies tablet inside until against the hard there was in passed ago th) the envelope cracks itself England the No envelope and 'Statute of Frauds' which requires certain con enclosure had to start wet and be dried out tracts to be in t writing a statute which has together when both could shrink in unison since been copied into the law of most of the Babylomaqs would doubtless be shocked at states of our Union!” our paper records thinking them no improveAnd what a Babylonian secretary wrote ment on clay Of course a shifty racketeerstayed written Ancient offices and libraries had files for ing individual could alter a document by a storing documents in pigeon holes or on shelves AND old AND if you’d like to‘ see 'what an early of executive looked like dictating to type gbis two secretaries — two at once —you can examine a of an eighth century B C Assyrian found at Nimrud The Assyrian seems to be one of those men who dictates standing And before him stands one scribe busily writing while the other waits with stylus poised all ready to start at a signal It looks as though they worked a shift system You can even find weak pdintj in ancient business practice with modern parallels For example many successful Babylonians could not read or write Why should they) It was a scribe’s business And writing was a hard subject to learn Kings who could read bas-reli- ef -- and write boasted of their achievements If you don’t think that has any moral for us Drs Chiera and Cameron think otherwise They comment: “The secretary or personal scribe became quite important and practically indispensable to all men transacting business With the advent of typists in the present day conditions appear to become more or less analogous and if our modern business leaders do not look out they too may soon be unable to write!” If Babylonia's solid citizens couldn't write how could they sign their names) Easy A man carried his signature hung around his neck It was a simple matter to stamp it on a seal on wet clay wherever needed fool-pro- iiuifA clothing was something that did not often get mentioned in clay writings It was taken far There were no newspaper ads or granted fashion column's Very little is known particularly about underclothes worn in those days YtTHERE would the Babylonian office girl go job hunting) The biggest offices in ancient cities of the Near East were in the temples Priests were kept busy taking in offerings of cattle and grain buying lands for the temple estates making loans to hard-u- p devotees who couldn't pay There were also banking houses In the buried office of one great Babylonian firm a$ Nippur archaeologists found a record room filled with thousands of tablets Over 700 contracts were unearthed in that building alone Big estates also had their scribes One archaeologist studied 4000 clay tablets containing the real estate dealings and high finance of a single powerful family at Nuzi 'They conducted business as a holding company and got away with grasping practices which are ' all too apparent itf their office files scribe A who preferred to be a public secretary could station himself or herself at the " There was always a crowd there city gate and a good deal of business dealing with the usual call for somebody who could write The twentieth century cannot help being impressed by ancient Babylonians Drs Chiera and Cameron believe that people who come long after us may be just as impressed by Babylonians as We are? They even think that the future scholars may skip over our civilization lightly as having little to offer Out paper' will decay Our real achievements are not thq sort that make good archaeological finds But Babylonia— now there-w- as a civilization! So the scholars who come after us may think with satisfaction For with all the thousands of clay records that have been dug up in the Near East in our time it is estimated that 99 per cent of the tons of clay writing are ' still buried ' jaw"' "''‘‘‘"'""1 lf pre-shru- In this Courtesy Prof Andre Parrot Louvre Museum schoolroom children learned to take dictation spell and do arithmetic Dishes hold shells used in calculation 4000-year-o- ld And so while our age of skyscrapers and gadgets is taken lightly there is the prospect that scholars of the future will dwell on the world’s first great civilization and "will prob-- ‘ ably decide that the golden age of mankind was in the second and third millenniums B G” |
