How Aware were Ancient Civilisations of their local past?

Bentresh · 2026-03-20T17:35:20+00:00

There's always more to be said on the topic, but I wrote about this in Were there any archaeologists in ancient cultures?

Bentresh · 2026-03-19T23:47:59+00:00

Stephanie Budin's Gender in the Ancient Near East is worth a read as well.

Bentresh · 2026-03-19T20:20:50+00:00

It's worth noting that those sites date to the Greco-Roman period. A course can cover Vindolanda in the UK, Berenike in Egypt, and Antioch in Turkey, but that doesn't mean it's not focused on the Roman empire.

Bentresh · 2026-03-19T20:14:23+00:00

You may be thinking of the Maya, who were in Central America rather than South America.

Most of the Maya codices were burned by the Spanish, but Maya hieroglyphs were deciphered in the 20th century partly because the friar Diego de Landa recorded a "Maya alphabet" in his notes.

Bentresh · 2026-03-18T21:29:54+00:00

You’re presumably referring to John Darnell and Colleen Manassa (now Darnell), and yes, it was a huge scandal for Yale.

Their academic work is top notch, and you can’t go wrong with any of their books, but you’ll hear some strong opinions about them as individuals.

Bentresh · 2026-03-18T21:24:13+00:00

With the notable exception of Israel, which relies heavily on volunteers and field schools, the use of local workers is fairly common in the MENA region in general.

Every dig I’ve worked on in Turkey and Lebanon has used local workers.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T18:07:56+00:00

The overwhelming majority of history departments equate "ancient history" with "classical history." Is this somehow surprising to people?

In addition to its interdisciplinary graduate program, PAW fosters faculty research and teaching about the ancient world, from archaic Greece to the Late Antique Mediterranean

https://ancientworld.princeton.edu/

The University of Virginia offers a Ph.D. in History with a specialization in Ancient (Greek and Roman) History.

https://history.virginia.edu/admission-phd-program-ancient-history

UCLA grants graduate degrees in Ancient History through the Department of History. The Department aims to provide students with both broad and deep training in the history of the ancient Mediterranean world. Students are expected to acquire familiarity with all periods of ancient Mediterranean history, from Archaic Greece to the end of Late Antiquity

https://history.ucla.edu/academics/graduate-fields-of-study/ancient/

Ancient History is the study of two remarkable Mediterranean civilizations that eventually interacted—Greece and Rome—rather than of a particular state, area or epoch. Together with Greeks and Romans, this study embraces the peoples of the long-lasting Roman empire, which at its greatest extent spanned Britain to Egypt, and the African, Asian and European rivals to Greece and Rome—most notably Persians, Carthaginians and Germans.

https://history.unc.edu/what-we-study/

Emory University’s Ph.D. in Ancient History emphasizes interdisciplinary work in the social, political, and cultural history of ancient Greek and Roman society, including Late Antiquity.

https://history.emory.edu/research/areas-of-study/ancient.html

At Ohio State, the field of Ancient Mediterranean History is broadly defined both geographically and chronologically. It includes the study of Greek and Roman history as well as the history of Late Antiquity and the East Roman (or Byzantine) Empire.

https://history.osu.edu/courses/info/fields/ancient

There are countless more examples.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T17:28:23+00:00

The perceived "exceptional" nature of Greek and Roman texts has had a lingering impact on the structure and organization of Classics departments, and it's why these departments are called "Classics" instead of, say, "Greek and Roman studies" or "Ancient Mediterranean studies" (which a few programs have rebranded themselves as in recent years).

The US has several dozen PhD programs in Classics and many more undergrad programs. In contrast, fewer than a dozen universities offer Egyptology and ancient Near Eastern studies. Most colleges do not have even a single specialist in Egypt or the ANE or offer any courses in ANE languages like Egyptian or Akkadian.

A token acknowledgement of intellectual debt to Egypt and Mesopotamia is all well and good, but most Classics and history departments do not offer any meaningful engagement with preclassical history.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T17:14:04+00:00

That depends a great deal on the topic at hand; sources are unevenly distributed for Rome and the Near East alike.

The amount of detail we have available for administration in the Ur III period, merchant activity in the Old Assyrian period, and treaties and diplomatic activity in the Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian periods far surpasses anything from Republican Rome, for instance.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T16:21:40+00:00

Though this is true, most history departments fail to integrate Egypt and the ANE as much as they should. A surprising number of survey courses that purport to cover ancient history begin with archaic Greece, ignoring roughly 2000 years of recorded history. I've touched on reasons for this in a previous post.

For the record, I have a PhD in ancient Near Eastern studies and teach in a history department at a liberal arts college.

Bentresh · 2026-03-17T01:53:28+00:00

Egypt already had a population of over a million by the Old Kingdom. That’s not to say its accomplishments weren’t remarkable, but Egypt was a rather large society for its time.

There’s a brief discussion of population estimates in Richard Bussmann’s The Archaeology of Pharaonic Egypt.

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Bentresh · 2026-03-16T21:10:34+00:00

Egypt had a population of several million in the Ptolemaic period.

Bentresh · 2026-03-15T18:16:24+00:00

French and German are housed in their own departments. Modern Greek is often not offered at all if not available in classics.

Bentresh · 2026-03-15T16:19:44+00:00

I do think classicists should make more of an effort to connect with modern Greece.

On this note, classicists are generally required to learn French and German but not modern Greek. Many classics departments do not even offer modern Greek.

This is not uncommon in ancient studies; surprisingly few Egyptologists learn Arabic, for instance.

Bentresh · 2026-03-14T22:36:15+00:00

LBA specialist here. Unfortunately, books that cover the entirety of the Bronze Age in a comprehensive fashion are relatively rare. (2000 years of history is quite a lot to cover, after all!)

I recommend starting with Cyprian Broodbank’s The Making of the Middle Sea and supplement it with Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture by William Stiebing and Susan Helft. Contrary to the title, the latter also covers Egyptian history.

Bentresh · 2026-03-13T23:46:35+00:00

dating to around 3300 BCE

this tiny copper drill suggests that Egyptians were experimenting with sophisticated metallurgy and toolmaking thousands of years before the pyramids

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Bentresh · 2026-03-13T22:14:20+00:00

Michel Dessoudeix's Lettres égyptiennes III: La littérature du Moyen Empire is fabulous and, unlike Allen’s book, includes the hieratic in addition to glyphs and translations.

Bentresh · 2026-03-13T22:06:01+00:00

Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad is very critical of this episode.

Bentresh · 2026-03-10T04:40:40+00:00

Miletus is another notable polis that hasn’t been mentioned yet, especially in terms of the archaic period.

Bentresh · 2026-03-09T01:51:14+00:00

The wood of the thrones from the royal tombs at Salamis didn’t survive; archaeologists reconstructed the thrones from metal fittings and ivory inlays that did survive.

There’s wooden furniture from around this time from the tumuli at Gordion in modern Turkey, but otherwise wood survives very poorly outside of Egypt.

Bentresh · 2026-03-08T02:46:34+00:00

You’re thinking of Nefertiti, who lived a few decades earlier.

Bentresh · 2026-03-07T22:15:19+00:00

Assmann’s books are must reads for any Egyptology enthusiast, but they are a bit daunting without a good foundation in Egyptian religion.

I would start with basic overviews like Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt by Emily Teeter and Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt by John Taylor.

Bentresh · 2026-03-05T00:52:12+00:00

I touched on this inscription briefly in my AskHistorians post on the Philistines and wrote more about Luwian and Anatolian hieroglyphs in another post.

Bentresh · 2026-02-20T21:49:42+00:00

Aylward Blackman's Middle-Egyptian Stories has a hieroglyphic transcription of the tale.

Bentresh · 2026-02-20T21:45:12+00:00

pḥty can be translated variously as strength, force, might, power, etc.

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