Admission requirements
Basic knowledge of Sumerian grammar and the cuneiform script.
Description
Sumerian is an ancient Near Eastern language known from well over 100,000 documents which are written in the cuneiform script and date from about 3200 to 100 BC. Sumerian was the primary written language of Southern Mesopotamia until about 1700 BC. During this course the student selects and studies under supervision a corpus of Sumerian texts and writes an essay about this corpus and its historical and cultural context. The student also attends the weekly seminars of the course Sumerian 3.
Course objectives
Students will be able to read, translate, and interpret Sumerian texts independently and put them into their historical and cultural context.
Timetable
See Timetable Classics and Ancient Civilizations: Assyriology
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Regular tutorials about the selected corpus
Course Load
The total course load is 280 hours (5 ec):
26 hours for attending the seminars
48 hours preparing the seminars
ca. 60 hours for the reading list
26 hours preparing the oral examination
ca. 120 hours studying the selected text corpus and writing the essay
Assessment method
Oral examination of the reading list and of the subject matter of the seminar Sumerian 3 (30% of the final grade). There is no resit for this examination.
Draft and final essay on the selected text corpus (70% of the final grade).
The final grade for the course is established by determining the weighted average.
Reading list
The student composes under supervision a reading list that is relevant for the text corpus he selected.
Registration
Students are required to register for this course via uSis, the course registration system of Leiden University. General information about uSis is available in English and Dutch.