Content

This unit deals with the period in which Egyptian culture underwent a number of cultural and religious transformations, between the arrival of Alexander the Great (332 B.C.) and the Arab conquest (640 A.D.). What can archaeology tell us about continuity and discontinuity in everyday life, especially when it comes to religion and popular beliefs?

Unit code: AH1400A

Unit status: Archived (New unit)

Points: 18.0

Unit level: Undergraduate Level 1

Unit discipline: History

Delivery Mode: Face to Face

Proposing College: St Athanasius College

Show when this unit is running

Learning outcomes

1.

Describe how Egypt functioned as a diverse multiethnic and multilingual society in this period

2.

Explain the religious and social transformations that took place in Egypt in the wake of the arrival of Christianity and the centuries to follow, until the advent of Islam.

3.

Identify the cultural seedbed (Pharaonic/Greek/Roman) in which Egyptian Christianity developed in Late Antiquity

4.

Evaluate the interaction between cultural continuity and religious transformation

Pedagogy

Face-to Face: 12 weekly sessions, required reading and additional reading resources.

Indicative Bibliography

  • Bagnall, Roger S. Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History. Taylor and Francis: London, 1995.
  • Bagnall, Roger S. and Dominic W. Rathbone. Egypt from Alexander to the Early Christians. London: British Museum Press, 2004.
  • Bagnall, Roger S. (ed.), Egypt in the Byzantine World, 300-700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007
  • Bowman, Alan. Egypt after the Pharaohs, Los Angeles: University of California Press 1986.
  • Johnson, Janet H. ed. Life in a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Constantine and Beyond. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1992.
  • Goudriaan, Koen. Ethnicity in Ptolemaic Egypt. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1988.
  • Bilde, Per., ed. Ethnicity in Hellenistic Egypt. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1992.
  • Hölbl, Gunther. A History of the Ptolemaic Empire. London: Routledge, 2001
  • Lewis, Naphtali. Life in Egypt under Roman Rule. Canton: American Society of Papryologists, 1999
  • Lewis, Naphtali. Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt. Canton: American Society of Papryologists, 2001.
  • Parsons, Peter. The City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt. London: Hachette, 2012
  • Riggs, Christina (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012
  • Rowlandson, Jane. Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: A Sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998

Assessment

Type Description Word count Weight (%)
Essay

Essay (2500 words)

0 60.0
Essay

Project Report (1500 words)

0 40.0
Approvals

Unit approved for the University of Divinity by John Capper on 1 Nov, 2017

Unit record last updated: 2022-10-11 12:13:49 +1100