ABSTRACT
The Egyptian equivalent of the proverb texts used by Mesopotamian elementary school children are the ‘Instructions’, a uniquely Egyptian literary form. Thus the ancient Mesopotamians had a literature used for educating children, whether taken from the oral culture, borrowed from adult literature or created particularly for their edification. The children’s literature genres developed in Mesopotamia and in Egypt over a roughly 1,500-year period – proverbs, fables, animal stories, debates, myths, instructions, adventure and magic tales, school stories, hymns and poems – pass down to the Hebrews and the Greeks. The genres and some narrative themes from the children’s texts of Mesopotamia and Egypt also became a part of the Ancient Greek educational enterprise. The traditional date for the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus is 753 BC, and for about 450 years it was little more than an agrarian city state squabbling with its more sophisticated neighbours the Etruscans and the Greek city states of southern Italy and Sicily.
