Augustana College - Rockety I Yearbook (Rock Island, IL)

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ERICSON IIALLiLADORATORY.

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31 ENE DORMITORY. LADIES. HALL.

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initten for the Rorl-rfy-I by DR. C. XV. Foss. E have no records of the earliest schools or of the first students. When history dawns on our race, Schools with teachers and students were already in existence. The earliest extant libraries contain textibooks un various subjects including scientific treatises. grammars, and lexicuns. The first people in develop :1 written language and literature were perhaps the Sumerians. the earliest inhabitants of the Euphrates valley. This literature was almost wholly of :1 religious nature. Their history carries us back tn the fourth or lifth millennium before Christ. An invasion of the Semites followed. The new pcopic adopted the civilization of the old inhabitants and also their system 0f writing, but they Ietained their own language. In the course of centuries the Sumerian became a dead language, but as it contained a rich religious literature of formulas hymns, and prayers, it was studied by the students of that day as Latin and Greek are today Grammars, lexicons. :md interlinenr translations uf texts used by students in those early ages are found in the ancient Assyrian 21nd Babylonian libraries. and may b: used by the students of the same nld languages today. The landing motive of the Babylonian student for study. aside from his love at knowledge, was therefore .1 religious one. His curriculum, it 1: tlllct included. besides the strictly religious subjects, also natural history, mathematics astronomy, and law but the whuIe was given a decidedly religious cast. His instructors were priests. and his studies were pursued in the interest of religion and under its sanction.