Murder in Mesopotamia, or Why We Have a Twelve-month Year OSHER 413-001 Dates: Thursdays, 1/24/13 – 2/28/13 Times: 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM Location: Commander’s House, Fort Douglas Instructor: Corethia Qualls,
[email protected] Course Overview Aside from the twelve-month year, the Mesopotamian originated and left to us writing, kingship, irrigation, monumental architecture, mathematics, organized religion, formal education, multilayered society, taxes, labor disputes, international trade networks, long distance running champions, love songs, standing armies, animal fables, library catalogues, juvenile delinquents, bicameral congresses, and moral ideals. Welcome to third millennium BCE Mesopotamia, the focus of this course. We will look at the results of Sir Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur in southern Mesopotamia and trace his findings in these areas back to possible earlier origins, then compare and contrast these elements as found in our own time and civilization. Materials or texts: There are no assigned texts. However, students can benefit from reading relevant portions of Agatha Christie Murder in Mesopotamia, any edition. Benjamin R. Foster, transl. and ed. From Distant days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1995. Benjamin R. Foster and Karen Polinger Foster Civilizations of Ancient Iraq Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009 Thorkild Jacobsen The Harps that Once . Sumerian Poetry in Translation New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987. Samuel Noah Kramer History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-nine Firsts in Recorded History Philadelphia, 1956: University of Pennsylvania Press (3rd rev. ed., 1981). Jack M. Sasson, Editor-in-chief Civilizations of the Ancient Near East Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 2000 (four volumes in two).