3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

The ancient world viewed Egypt as a repository of wisdom and learning, and even today, Egypt possesses in the modern consciousness a reputation for secret knowledge. From within Egypt, a diverse corpus of texts meant to record and transmit knowledge have survived and attest to Egyptian “scholarship.” This course will focus on what kinds of knowledge belonged to this written tradition (3000 BCE to 300 CE) and how those texts reflected broader social and cultural norms. This course will also consider, where relevant, the relationship between the intellectual traditions of Egypt and other societies of the ancient world, particularly Greece and Mesopotamia. Strong correlations between the Egyptian material and modern intellectual and scientific traditions, such as mathematics, astronomy, and medicine exist; but magic, divination, and religion were often treated in the same systematic, critical manner by the Egyptians. Thus the course will challenge modern understandings of science, and modern dichotomies such as rational versus irrational. After a brief introduction to Egypt, the first few weeks will concern who created these texts, who had access tothem, and their physical and intellectual milieu. Then, each week will cover a particular area of knowledge, its primary sources, social and multicultural context, and its relationship to the theoreticalthemes of the course.