- Docente: Maria Luisa Uberti
- Credits: 6
- SSD: L-OR/01
- Language: Italian
- Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
- Campus: Bologna
- Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Asian and African Languages and Cultures (cod. 0972)
Learning outcomes
The course is an introduction to the history of the pre-classical Near East and it aims to offer a fundamental and absolutely necessary knowledge of the earliest phase of history. Purpose of the course is to make students sensitive to a structural approach towards the main actors (Semites and non-Semites, from the ancient western Asia to Egypt) of those civilizations that are at the roots of hour culture, through the mediation of the Judeo-Christian tradition and of the Greek-Roman world. It is in the Near East that we see the birth of the city, the invention of writing and the creation of law. It is here that literary prose and poetry are first attested in written records, with highly-refined thematic and typological solutions, able to permeate the literary expresiions of the later, neighbouring cultures. It is from here that phenomenon of the "orientalizing",which opened up the Mediterranean world to a cultural koinè involving even the sphere of divine morphologies, rites and myths, originated and developed. The Near East has already covered a two millennia long historical journey, when it meets the Hellenic peoples and begins a dialogue that continues far after Alexander the Great's conquest, prefiguring those positive risults that will be confirmed at he time of Roman provincialization:
Course contents
The kingdom of Yamhad: an Old-Syrian state.
Readings/Bibliography
M.L. Uberti, Introduzione alla storia del Vicino Oriente antico, Bologna 2005.
M. Liverani, Vicino Oriente. Storia, società, economia, Roma-Bari, 1988, pp. 295-446.
M.G. Biga, La Mesopotamia e la Siria nel Medio Bronzo: Storia d'Europa e del Mediterraneo, vol. II, Roma 2006, pp. 63-123.
Notes from lessons, further bibliography and teaching materials will be given durinh lessons.
Teaching methods
Frontal lectures. Regular attendance is requested. Those who cannot attend the course for some sound reason should contact the teacher and arrange an alternative program
Assessment methods
Oral examination. The candidate should show a good knowledge of the history and geography of the ancient Near East.
Teaching tools
Photocopies, projector, video projector, overhead projector, geographical atlas.
Office hours
See the website of Maria Luisa Uberti