Mediterranean Interconnections: the Aegean, Egypt, and the Near East

(Spring semester 2021) The course focuses on the cross-cultural interconnections in the eastern Mediterranean basin between the Aegean, Egypt and the Near East. It examines modes of cultural transmissions and materiality from the Bronze Age (3rd and 2nd millennia BC) to the Classical Period. It provides an interpetive survey and a thematic coverage of important aspects of Egypt and the Aegean with a special focus on the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. Themes include trade and exchange, burial ideology and practices, religious modes of thought and action (ideology, ritual, magic), scripts and literacy, hierarchy and political organization, Aegaeans in Egypt and Syro-Palestine in the Early Mycenaean period, the Aegean and Egypt in the Amarna period, the Near Eastern evidence in the Aegean, the Aegyptiaca (Egyptian and egyptianized offerings) in the archaic Greek and the Early Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean. The students will benefit from accessing the unique Egyptian collection in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, which will provide the platform for the teaching of the ancient Egyptian civilization and its wonders, as well as major Prehistoric Antiquities in Mycenae and Athens.