2025-2026

AKKD 20605/30605 Intermediate Akkadian: Ishtar's Descent to the Netherworld

The Babylonian literary text known as Ishtar’s Descent to the Netherworld offers one of the most detailed accounts about Mesopotamian conceptions of the afterlife. Throughout this course, we will read the composition together and explore various aspects of it, including but not limited to the gods of the underworld, the role of humanity in life and death, and the relationship of this Babylonian composition with earlier Sumerian works of literature. In addition to gaining experience with the Standard Babylonian dialect, participants will enhance their knowledge of the cuneiform writing system and reinforce their grammatical knowledge of Akkadian. This course will also provide a review of essential resources for Assyriological research and help prepare students for advanced Akkadian courses.
Prerequisites

The successful completion of the Introduction to Babylonian course sequence (or equivalent)

Nik Gill
2025-2026 Autumn

EGPT 10101 Introduction to Middle Egyptian I

(ANCM 30500)
This course and its sequel EGPT 10102 provide an introduction to the hieroglyphic writing system, vocabulary and grammar of Middle Egyptian, the 'classic' phase of the Egyptian language developed during the Middle Kingdom (circa 2025-1773 BCE) and used until the disappearance of hieroglyphs over two thousand years later.
Brian Muhs
2025-2026 Autumn

NEAA 20146/30146 Death, Burial, and Afterlives in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia

The treatment of the dead in past cultures provides insights into how communities engaged with religious beliefs and cosmology and how they conceptualised identity among the living. This seminar examines death, funerary practices, and beliefs in the afterlife from a cross-cultural perspective, based in the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Within each of these cultures, the rituals and format of burials and beliefs about ‘life’ after death varied widely. Most archaeological focus on burials in these cultures has been on the dead as the primary data, and many studies reflect simplistically on the economic cost of burials, rather than the effect of death on the living, the family or the socio-political structure. But there are hints in the archaeological and textual record at the response and responsibilities of those burying the dead. This seminar will use archaeological data, artworks and textual materials (in translation) to examine the diversity of responses to death in two important literate cultures. The seminars will foster engagement with theoretical approaches, varied methodologies, and two extremely rich datasets.
Prerequisites

Undergraduate students should have taken at least one course in the archaeology or history of Egypt or Mesopotamia

Augusta McMahon, Anna-Latifa Mourad-Cizek
2025-2026 Autumn

NEAA 20144/30144 Mesopotamian Archaeology I: Villages to States

This course surveys the archaeology of the villages and states of Mesopotamia (approximately the modern countries of Iraq and Syria) during the late 7th through late 3rd millennia BCE. Students will be introduced to the range of Mesopotamian sites and material culture, the region’s variable landscapes and environments, and key themes and debates in the study of this literate complex society. Themes include the origins of irrigation and urbanism; the development of inequality and formalisation of violent conflict; the consequences of craft specialisation; the forms and meanings of funerary practices; the presentation of power; and the archaeological evidence for religious ritual and beliefs. These developments varied between north and south Mesopotamia (later Assyria and Babylonia), and the contrasts and cultural connections between these two linked but distinct regions are integral aspects of the course. 
Augusta McMahon
2025-2026 Autumn

GEEZ 10101 Elementary Ge'ez I

This course introduces the fundamentals of Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic) with an overview of grammar and the writing system, as well as exercises in reading early monumental and simple narrative texts.
Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee
2025-2026 Autumn

ARAM 10401 Elementary Syriac I

The purpose of this three-quarter sequence is to enable the student to read Syriac literature with a high degree of comprehension. The course is divided into two segments. The first two quarters are devoted to acquiring the essentials of Syriac grammar and vocabulary. The third quarter is spent reading a variety of Syriac prose and poetic texts and includes a review of grammar.
Aren Wilson-Wright
2025-2026 Autumn

HEBR 10101 Elementary Classical Hebrew I

(JWSC 22000)
The purpose of this three-quarter sequence is to enable the student to acquire a knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of Classical Hebrew sufficient to read prose texts with the occasional assistance of a dictionary. The first quarter focuses on the inflection of nouns and adjectives and begins the inflection of verbs. It includes written translation to and from Hebrew, oral exercises, and grammatical analysis of forms.
Aren Wilson-Wright
2025-2026 Autumn

NEHC 20110 Media Islam

(RLST 29110)
Media are increasingly integrated into contemporary life. As in the past, we consume media—watching movies and television, listening to music and podcasts, and following influencers on social media. However, these passive activities now overlap with media production, participation, and commentary. For Muslims negotiating identity in diverse global society, media figure into representation and self-representation in complex, often subtle, ways. Intersecting with the family, mosque, community, and other core social institutions, media play a central role in contemporary Muslim experience. This class will examine religious media, i.e. those branded as “Islamic” in some fashion, such as television programs on Islamic law, or social media content with explicit religious commitments and claims to authority. It will also consider how Islam has been represented in popular culture, and the ways Muslims have related to those constructions of their faith. However, this dichotomy of religious and popular media no longer holds with Muslim-oriented television shows like Ramy, Ms. Marvel, the integration of Islam into popular American entertainment from Jack Ryan to Mr. Robot, and the complex engagement with religion in media across the historically Muslim world.
Thomas Maguire
2025-2026 Autumn

AKKD 30363 Kassite Legal and Administrative Texts

We will read a choice of legal and administrative texts from the Kassite period (1400-1150 BC), including contracts, tables, receipts, and letters. You will get an introduction to the Middle Babylonian dialect of Akkadian and learn how to approach those genres. We will also read unpublished material from photos, casts, and original tablets.
Prerequisites

1 year of Akkadian/Babylonian

Susanne Paulus
2025-2026 Autumn

AANL 30301 Hittite-Akkadian Translations

The royal chancellery of the Hittite state employed the Hittite language for internal purposes, but Akkadian remained an important language of education and international diplomacy. In this class we will read texts that are attested in both Akkadian and Hittite. These will include historical texts and treaties that were composed in Boğazköy Akkadian as well as examples of Mesopotamian literature that were translated into Hittite. This class is intended for students who have experience with both Hittite and Akkadian, although students who are familiar with only one of these languages are also welcome to enroll.
Timothy D. Leonard
2025-2026 Autumn
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