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Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) engages
in the interdisciplinary humanistic study and teaching of the cultures
of the Near East (often called the Middle East) as they express
themselves in languages and texts, broadly defined to include written
and oral sources, as well as art, architecture, archaeology, and
material culture. These cultures encompass the geographic region
that stretches from North Africa through the eastern Mediterranean,
Arabia and Iran. Its programmatic foci are the civilizations of
Mesopotamia/Iraq, Egypt, Israel, Syria, Arabia, Anatolia/Turkey
and Persia/Iran. It teaches Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Egyptian,
Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and other languages
of the region, from ancient through modern.
Interdisciplinary
Approach
NELC's approach
to languages and texts is interdisciplinary, comparative and diachronic,
that is:
It
places these primary sources in their historical, cultural and intellectual
contexts and explicates them by means of such disciplines as philology;
literary criticism; history; archaeology; history of art and architecture;
comparative law; religion; philosophy and ethics; psychology; gender
studies; anthropology; theater, cinema, and other performance studies.
The various
fields within NELC are studied in comparison with each other:
for example, the Hebrew Bible in the light of the ancient Near
East; the origins of monumental architecture in Egypt in comparison
with that of Mesopotamia; the origins of writing in Egypt, Mesopotamia,
and Canaan; Rabbinic Judaism and Medieval Islam in comparison
with each other and in the context of Greco-Roman culture and
its heritage; modern Middle Eastern literatures in their various
interactions.
Near Eastern
cultures are studied in the context of their development from
the ancient and medieval through the modern periods.
Mission
Because of the
profound impact of Near Eastern civilizations on the cultures of
the world in areas as diverse as writing, literature, religion,
science and politics from ancient times until today, knowledge of
the Near East is a prerequisite for any person who considers him
or herself truly educated. Therefore, while believing that the deepest
understanding of any culture requires a profound knowledge of its
language(s), NELC not only teaches Near Eastern languages to all
who wish to learn them but also, particularly on the undergraduate
level, to making Near Eastern cultures accessible in translation.
The department's goal is to enable every interested student to rise
to the fullest level of his or her ability in learning everything
that the civilizations of the Near East have contributed to world
knowledge. To achieve these goals, the department offers courses
on three levels:
Resources
A
very important asset for Near Eastern students at Penn are the unsurpassed
resources of the Penn
library system and the University of Pennsylvania
Museum which are exceptionally strong in the
fields covered by NELC. These play a central role in teaching and
in the research of our students and faculty. They afford hands-on
contact with many of the texts and artifacts that are the primary
sources of their study.
The
Museum's Babylonian Section
houses the second largest collection of cuneiform tablets in the
U.S.
(ca. 30,000 tablets) and the most important collection of Sumerian
literature in the world; it also houses the files of the Pennsylvania
Sumerian Dictionary project. Penn
faculty and graduate students are involved in decipherment and publication
of the tablets and the preparation of the dictionary. In the
Tablet Room, students can hold original copies of the Sumerian Flood
Story and part of the Gilgamesh Epic in their hands and study them.
The Egyptian Section
houses approximately 40,000 Egyptian artifacts, by far the largest
university collection in the U.S.
and among the largest in the world. The section continues more than
a century of ongoing field work in Egypt
and students often are members of its archeological and epigraphic
expeditions. The Near East
Section has the largest collection of Israelite and Canaanite
artifacts outside of Israel.
Some NELC courses include guided tours of both the public exhibits
and restricted-access collections of the museum.
The Museum's Islamic
Room has a remarkable collection of Islamic artifacts.
The
Van
Pelt Library and
Museum libraries, along with the
library of the Center
for Advanced Judaic Studies (CAJS), house
superb collections in all areas of Near Eastern studies, including
ancient Mesopotamia, Egyptology, Hebrew & Judaica, and Arabic
& Islamic studies. The library's practice is to acquire every
important new work pertaining to the region.
The collections include between 350,000-400,000 volumes in
Bible, biblical archaeology, and Judaica (including rare books and
manuscripts), one of the five largest
and most important such collections in the United States. Students regularly
use the excellent reference collection in Van pelt Library's Judaica and Ancient Near East Seminar for class preparation, research, and collaboration
with each other. Undergraduate and graduate students regularly
tour CAJS's Rare Book Collection
(where they can see one of the two oldest extant copies of the Passover
Haggadah) and use its library in their research, assisted by its
staff. Van Pelt Library's Islamic
Middle East collection ranks in the top ten among American research
institutions, with over 80,000 volumes in Arabic, Persian, Turkish
and other pertinent languages, in fields such as history, Islamic
studies, and literature.
The Center For
Advanced Judaic Studies is another important resource for the department.
Visiting scholars from around the world who are serving as
fellows at the Center lecture publicly and offer courses or tutorials
in the Department, supplementing the Department's regular offerings
from their own current research. NELC graduate
students are invited to attend CAJS's weekly seminars where the
fellows present their latest research.
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Department
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