Do you know how writing developed? Who lived in the Middle East 5 000–2 500 years ago? What literature they read? And what were their gods like? What they thought about gender, science, and migration at the time? The online course examines the period (3 000–323 BCE) known as the Cuneiform Period, when the most important writing system in Mesopotamia was cuneiform.
The cultures and inventions of the ancient Near East still influence us in many ways today. Urban culture and writing were among the first to develop in the area of modern-day Iraq, where advanced mathematics and astronomy were practiced. The cuneiform texts reveal to us the high-level literary tradition of the era and what people thought.
In this free and open online course from the Finnish Institute in the Middle East and the University of Helsinki, you will dive into the cultural history of ancient Mesopotamia which will be examined thematically from the perspectives of literature and writing, religion, science and gender. At the end of the course, you will also learn what kind of – sometimes dubious – interest the heritage of the era has aroused outside the Middle East in recent centuries.
The course is written by researchers at the University of Helsinki’s Centre of Excellence on Ancient Near Eastern Empires, and the course content is based on recent research in the field. You will also get to know the written sources of the era through translations from the original language. The course is only available in Finnish.