History of the Ancient Near East
August 2004
Instructor: Robert Drews, 320A Furman Hall, 343:4115, robert.drews@vanderbilt.edu
Required texts:
ANET = J. B. Pritchard (ed.), The Ancient Near East, vol I: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1958). The italicized numbers refer to the illustrations.
WS = William H. Stiebing, Jr., Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture (New York:
Longman, 2003)
OSB = Oxford Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992). The first 199 pages are devoted
to articles on the context within which the Biblical writers thought and wrote.
Optional text: R. Drews, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1993)
WS, ANET, and OSB are available in the bookstore, under Classics 207. We will have short, daily quizzes on the reading assignments; quizzes count for a third of the semester grade.
Graduate students will write a research paper, due Nov. 29.
Hour exams Sept. 22 and Oct. 29. If you miss the exam you may take a make-up, but will be docked two thirds of a q. p. Final exam (cumulative) scheduled for Dec. 14.
Schedule of readings and lectures
Aug. 25: Introduction
Aug. 27: Climate change and the neolithic “revolution” (WS 1-13)
Aug. 30: Neolithic Anatolia and the Anatolian languages; the spread of a neolithic economy to the Aegean and southeastern Europe; the “Black Sea Flood” (WS 13-28; ANET 28-30= The Deluge, and ill. 49)
Sept. 1: Metallurgy and the beginning of civilization; temple, image, and the creation of gods and goddesses in Mesopotamia and Egypt (WS 29-40 and 103-108; ANET 37, 38)
Sept. 3: Early Dynastic Sumer: 3000-2330 BC (WS 40-50; ANET 1, 15, 26, 34, 35, 44, 97)
Sept. 6: Sumerian civilization; the Levant in the Early Bronze Age (WS 50-64; ANET 80-85 = Descent of Ishtar)
Sept. 8: Sargon of Akkad, the Akkadian empire, and the destruction ca. 2200 BC (WS 65-75; ANET 85‑86 Legend of Sargon; [illustration] 86)
Sept. 10: The Third Dynasty of Ur; prehistoric India (WS 75-85; ANET 40‑75 =Epic of Gilgamesh)
Sept. 13: The Egyptian Old Kingdom (WS 108-130; ANET 234-37 = Instruction of Ptah‑hotep; 16, 52, 84, 191, 192)
Sept. 15: Egypt from the Fifth Dynasty to the end of the Middle Kingdom (WS 130-152; ANET 5-16= the Story of Sinuhe and the Story of Two Brothers, and 252‑57 = Prophecy of Nefer‑rohu; 2, 42)
Sept. 17: Hammurabi and the Old Babylonian kingdom; the Levant and Anatolia in the Middle Bronze Age (WS 85-95)
Sept. 20: Mesopotamian society in the Age of Hammurabi (ANET 138-167 = Code of Hammurabi; and ills. 59, 188, 189)
Sept. 22: EXAMINATION
Sept. 24: The Indo-European problem, and the Indo-Hittite theory
Sept. 27: The Shaft Graves at Mycenae, change in temperate Europe, and the beginnings of chariot warfare
Sept. 29: The Great Kingdoms of Hatti, Mittani (sic), Kassite Mesopotamia, and Hyksos Egypt (WS 95-102 and 152-161; ANET 36, 41)
Oct. 1: Egypt and the Levant under the Eighteenth Dynasty (WS 162-178; ANET 175-82 and 272-77 = Annals of Thutmose III and the Amarna Letters; 4, 5, 8, 12, 14, 18, 19, 88, 175)
Oct. 4: Gods, kings, and superstition in the Bronze Age (ANET 31-39 and 75-76 = Bab. Creation Epic, and an incantation for toothaches; ills. 71, 104, 114, 118, 121, 144, 145, 158, 163)
Oct. 6: Akhenaton and the Amarna Age (WS 178-187; ANET 226-30 = Hymn to the Aton; 108, 109, 110)
Oct. 8: The Hittite Empire, Mittani, and Ugarit (WS 187-205; ANET 118-32 = Tale of Aqhat)
Oct. 11: Nineteenth-Dynasty Egypt; Mycenaean Greece (WS 205-208; ANET 6, 45, 87)
Oct. 13: The catastrophe ca. 1200 BC; end of the Egyptian empire in the Levant; Canaanites and Philistines (WS 208-212; ANET 231 = "Israel Stele" and 185-86 = insc. of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu; 7, 92; optional reading of Drews, End of the Bronze Age)
Oct. 15: The end of the Bronze Age in Greece and Anatolia (WS 212-222)
(Fall break, Oct. 18-19)
Oct. 20: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Phoenicia in the period 1200-900 BC (WS 225-227 and 233-241; ANET 16-24 and 222-24 = Journey of Wen-Amon, and temple tariffs; 63, 64, 65, 103)
Oct. 22: The Hebrew Bible as an historical source (WS 241-244; James Sanders, “Communities and Canon,” pp. 91-100 in OSB)
Oct. 25: Israel before the monarchy (from OSB, Exodus 1-20; Judges 13:1 to 21:25)
Oct. 27: History and the problem of the “united monarchy” in Jerusalem (WS 244-247; from OSB, II Samuel 9-21; and R. E. Friedman, “Torah and Covenant,” pp. 154-163)
Oct. 29: EXAMINATION
Nov. 1: The rise of Assyria (WS 223-225 and 227-233; ANET 188-93 = annals of Assyrian kings)
Nov. 3: The Assyrian Empire from 744 to 669 BC (WS 263-268; ANET 195-202 = annals of Sargon, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon)
Nov. 5: Assyria at its zenith (WS 268-278)
Nov. 8: Skythians, Kimmerians, Medians and the beginnings of armed riding; the fall of the Assyrian Empire (WS 279-281; ANET 202-03 = Bab. Chron. on the fall of Nineveh)
Nov. 10: Israel and Judah to 700 BC, and the origins of “the prophets” (WS 248-262; from Bible, I Kings 16:29 through II Kings 10:36)
Nov. 12: The eighth- and seventh-century prophets in Israel and Judah (from the Bible, Amos 1-9; and James Mays, “The Phenomenon of Prophecy,” pp. 164-171 in OSB)
Nov. 15: The Achsenzeit: the religious revolution in India and eastern Iran, and the origins of Mazdaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism
Nov. 17: The Chaldaean (Neo-Babylonian) empire (WS 281-292, and the triumph of the Torah among the Judahites of Mesopotamia and Judaea
Nov. 19: Saite Egypt, the kingdom of Lydia, and Cyrus of Persia (WS 293-99; ANET 203-04 and 206-08 = Bab. Chron. entry for 539 BC, and Cyrus' barrel inscription; 3)
(Thanksgiving week vacation)
Nov. 29: Darius and Xerxes (WS 299-313; ANET 62, 123, 195, 196, 197)
Dec. 1: Judahite religion during the Babylonian Captivity of 587-539 BC and the Persian period (WS 313-318; from the Bible, Ezekiel 1-3, 22-24 and 40-48; Isaiah 44-49)
Dec. 3: The later Achaemenids and Alexander the Great (WS 318-322)
Dec. 6: Astrology, the God of Heaven, and the fading of the old temple cults (OSB: Esther)
Dec. 8: The Near East after Alexander: changes and continuities (WS 323-328; OSB: Tobit)
