The Proverb
Earthy, ironic, four thousand years old — the everyday wit and worry of an ancient people, saying by saying.
Also: proverb · proverbs · Sumerian proverbs · sayings · wisdom sayings · proverb collection
Mesopotamia produced thousands of proverbs, gathered into large Sumerian collections that were copied by students in the scribal schools. They are pithy, earthy, and frequently sly: observations about money and poverty, fools and the wise, dogs and foxes, women and men, fate and luck. Some are moral, many simply shrewd, and a good number are wry to the point of comedy. As a window onto the everyday outlook of an ancient people — their humor, anxieties, and hard-won common sense — the proverb collections are without equal.
In short
The Mesopotamian proverb — a terse, often witty or ironic saying drawn from everyday life — collected in large Sumerian compilations used in scribal education.
Where it’s found
The Sumerian proverb collections (ETCSL 6.1.01–6.1.28 and 6.2.1–6.2.5, in corpus)
How the idea developed across Sumer, Babylon & Assyria
The great Sumerian proverb collections are an Old Babylonian school product; the Akkadian tradition preserves bilingual proverbs and sayings. Many proverbs are obscure to us (lost context, broken tablets) — meanings are sometimes uncertain.