Post for October 3

This past week we focused on two groups that had access to various types of information: scribes and priests. These professional identities overlap in many ways as they required specialized knowledge bound up in literacy and in some cases, communication through supernatural channels.

For this week I want you to try focusing on one or two lines from one of the primary sources and using your chosen evidence as a platform for discussing a larger theme talked about in class thus far. This will be good practice for your final papers in which you will tackle broad subjects like ethics or religion and have to support your arguments with details from several types of texts. You can also uses primary texts quoted in the Donadoni volume and Pinch PDF as well.

Feel free to tackle whichever topics spark your interest but here are some suggestions if you are feeling stuck:

access to wisdom/knowledge
overlap between scribes and priests (ie lector priests)
relationship between these professions and the king
social hierarchy as evidenced by these professions
importance of the written word and names
relationships between religion and politics

and many, many more....

Post for September 26

This week you learned about artists, laborers, craftsmen, and soldiers. The primary source material includes the Satire of the Trades, the PDFs of McDowell, the Kamose Texts, Capture of Joppa, Victory Stela of Piye, and PDFs of the solider autobiographies.

Since there is so much material to cover for Tuesday I want to make sure you all have at least one text you know very, very well. This also means that we can hear many voices in class on Tuesday as at least a few of you will be experts on one of the texts.

With this in mind...please pick one of these texts (for McDowell you can look at several of the shorter texts if you wish) and provide some commentary on what you think are the main aspects of the Egyptian cultural identity embedded in them.

This will involve a close reading of the text and some critical thought to how these texts fit with information you have gathered so far in other readings and the lectures.

Post for September 19

This week's reading concerns the social category that composed the majority of ancient Egypt's population: the peasant farmers!

Please read the assigned chapter by Caminos in the Donadoni volume as well as Ray's chapter and the Heqanahkte letters on Blackboard.

This week I am happy for you to post any thoughts or questions about this reading but here are some ideas to get you started.

How does the content of the Heqanakhte letters reflect society at the end of the First Intermediate Period/beg of Middle Kingdom?

What can you glean about family life and structure in ancient Egypt from the Heqanakhte letters?

How do Heqanakhte and his family reflect (or not reflect) the portrait Caminos paints of the peasant's life?

What are your reactions to the Caminos and/or Ray chapters? Part of your training as college students is to learn to evaluate the scholarship of others. In this vein, I always encourage you to express your thoughts on the secondary reading. I will share my opinions on Tuesday but I want to hear yours first!

The Caminos chapter includes other primary sources so please comment on those if you wish and/or connect them to the main primary material for this week, the Heqanakhte letters.

Happy Reading!

September 12

This week you were provided with an introduction to Egyptian mythology through the Quirke reading (PDF under course documents on Blackboard)and Prof. Morris's lecture. As most of you are newcomers to the study of Ancient Egypt and haven't dealt extensively with their religious beliefs I would like to hear your thoughts about the Egyptian religious worldview.

Based on your reading of Quirke (which presumes prior knowledge and does jump around a lot I know), what do you think are the major themes of Egyptian religious belief? What patterns and overarching motifs can you tease out from the information provided? One way to approach this question may be to think about the geography of Egypt and how its character is manifested in the Egyptian view of the universe.

Specific examples from the lecture and reading are welcomed. 1-2 paragraphs in the comment section.