Week 1 Schedule

  • Class Introduction Video [watch]

Week 1 Topics:

  • Introduction to the Class
  • The Environment of the Nile Valley & Surrounding Area
  • Chronology of Ancient Egypt
  • Understanding the Language & Writing of the Ancient Egyptians

Week 1 Lecture Videos

  • Introduction to the Environment of the Nile Valley & Surrounding Area [watch]
  • The Nile Delta [watch]
  • The Nile Valley [watch]
  • The Annual Innundation [watch]
  • The Nile as National Highway [watch]
  • The Southern Boundary [watch]
  • The Political Geography of Ancient Egypt [watch]
  • Understanding Egyptian Chronology: The Calendar [watch]
  • Ancient Egyptian Historical Memory [watch]
  • Modern Chronological Framework [watch]
  • Hieroglyphs [watch]
  • Hieratic [watch]
  • Demotic [watch]

Week 1 Readings

  • Hassan, Fekri (1997). The Dynamics of a Riverine Civilization: A Geoarchaeological Perspective on the Nile Valley, Egypt. World Archaeology 29(1), pp. 51-74; Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/124996 (accessible though MSU libraries e-resources services)

Week 1 Assignments

  • Blog #1: Introduce Yourself (due by Thursday, July 7th, @ 5pm).  This blog is a little different.  First, it is due on Thursday.  Second, this blog doesn’t require a response (like all of the other blog entries in the class).  This is an opportunity for you to introduce yourself.  Talk about your major, your academic interests, why you are taking this class, what you do for fun – whatever.  You are introducing yourself to your fellow students and me (your professor)

7 thoughts on “Week 1 Schedule

  1. Hi Professor Watrall,

    I was looking through the schedule and was just wondering if you could put the dates up next to all the assignments that are due. I like to plan ahead and it would just clarify and make it easier to see the dates of when things are due.

    Thanks!
    Faith

    • Faith – per your request, actual dates are now associated with the assignments. You will also notice that the due days for the blog assignment has changed – I’ll talk about this in my weekly intro video (on Monday)

  2. Saw this on BoingBoing, and thought I’d help out.

    I’ve ripped the week 01 lectures to mp3s (70 MB total).
    http://www.megaupload.com/?f=X7GT6UPZ
    They should last until they lack downloads for 90 days.

    VLC can play them at 1.5x or 2x speed. : )
    A VLC playlist to stream the vids from the web is included as well.
    Of course, mp3s will play anywhere. Enhanced podcast m4a could include slide images, but players don’t support them yet. *shrug* So far, the visuals weren’t terribly vital, so I didn’t harvest jpegs.

    If I’m violating licensing, let me know and I’ll take them down.

  3. Hey David – thanks for stopping by. I always intend to do an audio only version of the lecture, but never get around to it…so thank. As for license….that is the joy of Open Access. All of the course material is released under a CC license.

  4. The following flvs on the class site need their filenames swapped:
    chronology2.flv = “Chronology 3, Modern Framework”
    and
    chronology3.flv = “Chronology 2, Historical Memory”

    That mixup leaked into my first batch of mp3s.
    I reuploaded (same megaupload link above) and also added the slide images.

Leave a Reply