The celebrated “Letter of Gilgamesh,” treated by Gurney, AnSt VII (1957), 127 ff. and by Kraus, AnSt XXX (1980), 109 ff., has so far remained without parallel in Akkadian literature. Kraus pondered the significance and interpretation of this enigmatic text, and found it an “Erstling” (p. 120). He looked ahead to Ovid for a parallel. With diffidence one may also look backward to some obscure school-boy efforts from Sargonic Girsu. In the archives of the ensi of Girsu appeared various learner's texts which I have suggested elsewhere were the efforts of bureaucrats learning their profession “on the job.” Among these are two fanciful products that raise some of the same problems that the Gilgamesh letter does.

The first is a “letter” (L. 1073), that, daydream though it be, offers a tantalizing glimpse of another scholar apparently thinking along the same lines as the amanuensis of Gilgamesh.