ANTH224 - NIN,BABYLON&PERSEPOLIS: Nineveh, Babylon & Persepolis

The biblical book of Jonah calls Ninevah an "exceeding great city", while Herodotus marveled at the extent of Babylon, where news of the city's capture took days to penetrate all of its quarters, and Diodorus described the Persian capital of Persepolis as "the richest city under the sun". For much of the first millenium BC, the empires based in these three cities defines the history of Western Asia, providing much of the economic, political and cultural context for developments from Greece to India. This course will explore the history of the Ancient near East from ca. 900-63 BC. We will evaluate the archaeological evidence for four empires -- the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Achaemenid Persians and the Seleucid Empire. Using Penn's unrivaled museum collections, students will examine topics including imperialism, cultural hybiridity, trade and interaction, and the construction and use of tradition and memory.