Instructions of Shuruppak
composition: secureauthorship: traditional
witness: Early Dynastic tablets from Abu Salabikh and a larger Old Babylonian manuscript tradition
Practical wisdom passed from father to son, on farming, speech, and neighbors, survives as one of the earliest known works of wisdom or instructional literature.
- wisdom as inheritance
- proverb as social instruction
- one of the scribal school's earliest known curriculum texts
- link to the flood-hero tradition
A collection of proverbs and moral instructions framed as advice from Shuruppak to his son Ziusudra, the flood hero of later Sumerian tradition. Known from Early Dynastic witnesses at Abu Salabikh and a much larger later Old Babylonian manuscript tradition, it counts among the earliest surviving works of literature rather than pure administration.
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