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Saturday, February 04, 2006

Professor Will

Today is my “get ahead” day before the Super Bowl tomorrow night. I have to give a presentation in class on Monday morning about kingship in Dynastic Egypt and I’m finding that the incredible amount of information available about ancient Egypt is getting the better of me. In other words, I want to talk about everything I can get my hands on but must come up with a concise and coherent lecture/discussion. One option is to show a short video in class but that seems too easy. Besides having trouble finding a good scholarly (i.e. non-Discovery Channel) documentary on Egypt it seems to me that showing what I could get my hands on would be overkill in a room full of archaeologists. One can only see a documentary that starts with a time-lapse video of the sun setting/rising behind a silhouette of the pyramids at Giza so many times (whoever shot that footage is a millionaire).

I assigned a chapter on kingship from Wilkinson’s Early Dynastic Egypt. It’s long but an easy read and interesting if only by merit of not being a typical regurgitation of Egyptian history. I’m also going to draw from two theory-based articles to do the compare-contrast thing: The Symbolic Mechanisms of Sacred Kingship: Rediscovering Frazer by Luc de Heusch and Agriculture and the Origins of the State in Ancient Egypt by Robert C. Allen. The latter article caught my fancy because as many of you know, agriculture is my thing and I can’t not talk about it at every opportunity (I can’t explain the fascination with farming and subsistence so don’t ask!). So those two take of the theory aspect of my discussion. Finally, for a case study I plan on talking a little about my favorite Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaten. I like this cat because he was revolutionary and gave a big middle finger to the whole Egyptian religious tradition.

This is really only the second time I’ve led a class and although it’s only for an hour out of a three-hour meeting, it’s keeping me busy. I have a new respect for all you college professors who do this consistently. Intro classes I can see being on the easy side but making a graduate seminar interesting on a weekly basis is a feat in itself. Any secrets of the trade I need to know about?

Posted by Will at February 4, 2006 03:09 PM in Graduate School