Assyriology is the study of an entire
human civilization over a period of
3,000 years. It has different languages
like Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian
and an astonishing array of material
culture and studying Assyriology at
Cambridge brings you into contact with
this whole world.
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You don't need to know anything about
Ancient Mesopotamia beforehand in order
to come and study at Cambridge, we have
students who come to us because they're
interested in history, literature,
religion, languages - even mathematics,
astronomy. There are so many aspects to
Ancient Mesopotamian civilization that
there are so many different directions
that you can go with it. So actually
originally I applied to do Archaeology
at Cambridge and I didn't really know
that Mesopotamia existed when I applied,
then I got here and in first year I did
a cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia paper
which looked at Archaeology - and I didnít do
any language - and that was just by far
the most interesting paper that I
took and I think because of the duality
of studying Mesopotamia you get the text
and the artefacts and the imagery and
pairing them together was really amazing.
The great thing about Assyriology here is
that we actually get access to the
physical tablets and prisms. In class we
read the signs and they often like an
autograph copy which is someone drawing
those signs on a piece of paper but then
to actually be able hold the prism and
then apply the technical grammatical
skills we've been learning to the
physical objects is really special.
There's a whole world out there of
Mesopotamian literature which hardly
anyone knows about, but it's beautiful as
literature and when you can read these
texts in the original then all of those
nuances really come alive and thatís
something really special because it's
something so few people can do.
I'm really enjoying learning language - it's
quite time-consuming learning all of the
little signs, but it's really
satisfying when you get your head around
it and you're actually able to translate.
Between the second and third year, the
course includes a so-called ëstudy tourí
where people can travel - sometimes to the
Middle East, sometimes for archaeological
excavation, sometimes for language
courses in things like German which are
so relevant to the secondary literature.
Mesopotamia is inherently a completely
fascinating area. It's so incredibly rich
in terms of the data and what we know
and here at Cambridge we have
incredibly awesome staff and amazing
Resources. The group of students who are
actually involved in Assyriology are very
closely knit and very supportive of each other
It is a specialist discipline in
the sense that it's not a huge
department, but by virtue of that it
means you get to know everyone from the
undergraduates to the professors here.
Regardless of where you are at on the
ladder there's a sense of collaboration
because you're all trying to contribute
to the study of this culture.
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