Course Syllabus

EGYT 2850

Images, Ideology and Egyptian Warfare

Spring 2015

Thursday 1-3:30pm

This is not a syllabus proper, but a working document.  It does not constitute a contract and is subject to change at any time.  Any changes will be applied to the document as kept on Canvas, and will be discussed in class.

Images and Ideology:

Images of violence and warfare are pervasive in Egypt, but their interpretation is not straightforward. What relationship is there between such images and historical events, ritual events, and royal ideology? How do such images function? This seminar will examine Egyptian images of violence and warfare from before the New Kingdom. It will take a contextual and comparative approach to discern patterns in the ways such images are used, with the goal being to understand why they were made rather than how they can be used to answer historical questions. 

Objectives:

Students will become familiar with both the imagery of violence in early Egypt and the range of questions that can be asked about the content, context, and meaning of such images.  In addition, the class as a whole will work together to tackle important questions, both about the ancient past (where do order and chaos belong in our understanding of Egyptian thought?) and about methods of studying it (how do we decide what to read? Once we’ve read it, how do we decide if it is helpful or not?)  Students will thus finish the semester with increased research tools that are broadly applicable.

Goals include to read a relatively small number of provocative articles and really understand them, discussing them deeply, and to look at a moderate number of images, again deeply.

 Assessment:

course participation: 25%

weekly response papers: 25%

presentation: 25%

paper: 25%