Semester in Review: Fall 2023 at JHU

As 2023 comes to a close and a new year begins, I spent quite a bit of time reflecting on the previous semester at Johns Hopkins as well as the year as a whole more broadly. This is my Fall 2023 semester in review at Johns Hopkins’s PhD program in the Department of Near Eastern Studies!

Fall 2023 Class Schedule

Generally, the maximum number of classes that a PhD student can take in our department is capped at five due to the rigorous requirements of each course. Due to the amazing schedule each semester, I always seek additional permissions to squeeze in (or at least audit) a sixth course. In the Fall 2022 semester, I took a German for reading course as my sixth and even audited Intro to Middle Egyptian as a seventh. Similarly in the Spring 2023 semester I took six courses (see Conclusion below). This semester, I took five classes and audited one, mainly due to the fact that I also needed to pass a French proficiency exam. Here is a recap of my six classes this semester:

Northwest Semitic Epigraphy: Without ranking my classes (since all are great!), this class was certainly one of my favorites, due in large part to the subject matter which most closely aligns with my primary research interests (i.e., the intersection of comparative Semitics and Semitic inscriptions). The class covered the origins of the alphabet (Umm el-Marra, Wadi el-Ḥôl, Sinai, etc.); Late Bronze and Iron Age inscriptions in the Levant; Phoenician inscriptions (Ahirom, Yehimilk, Safatba‘l, Abiba‘l, Eliba‘l, the Nora Stone, Yehawmilk, Kulamuwa, and Karatepe/Azatiwada); Moabite inscriptions (Mesha and Kerak); Ammonite inscriptions (Amman Citadel, Siran Bottle); Edomite inscriptions (from Ḥorvat Uza, Ḥorvat Qitmit, Tell el-Kheleifeh, Tel Malhata, etc.); Israelite inscriptions (Samaria ostraca and Kuntillet ‘Ajrud); and Judean inscriptions (e.g. Lachish and Arad ostraca). We also had a class on forgeries and two classes with a guest instructor devoted to using Adobe tools (especially Illustrator and Photoshop) for creating line drawings, script charts, and the like. This class was unique in its intimate class size (three students) and weekly participation requirements (an outline and/or presentation from each student every week). For example, already in the second week of class I had prepared and presented an 18-page outline on the ancient Arabian linear script used to write languages such as Safaitic and Sabaic. In addition to the weekly outlines and presentations, there were two final projects: one paper and one collaborative PowerPoint. The paper was an overview of Canaanite dialects and the collaborative PowerPoint (created by all three students) was a 150+ slide PPT in which we outlined, letter by letter, the “biographies” of the development of the forms of each letter from early alphabetic to Phoenician, Aramaic, Ammonite, Hebrew, Moabite, and Edomite script varieties with a focus on paleographic evolution over time.

Ezekiel: My other core class was a rapid reading Hebrew course on the book of Ezekiel. The four students in this class (three PhD students and one especially gifted undergraduate student) read the entire book of Ezekiel (48 chapters) in Hebrew. Admittedly, I’ve had similar rapid reading classes in the past which were of a similar pace (4+ chapters weekly), even if the quality of philological and linguistic discussion of the prior courses was not as high as this seminar. But what made this class unique was the text used for reading through the Hebrew Bible, namely the Aleppo Codex as published in the Hebrew University Bible Project. It goes without saying that the vast majority of Hebrew classes taught at universities and seminaries use BHS or even BHQ which are printed editions of the St. Petersburg (or Leningrad) Codex. This class, therefore, stretched the students in a new way by, inter alia, familiarizing us with the text and apparatuses of the HUBP edition. The final project was a translation and philological commentary of Ezek. 40-48 with notes ranging from anything linguistic, text critical, Masoretic, historical, intertextual, literary, sociological, and so forth.

Akkadian Literary and Religious Texts: While my major is Northwest Semitics, my minor in the department is Assyriology with a focus on Akkadian language and texts. Each semester, the professor of the advanced Akkadian seminar chooses a corpus, and this semester focused on literary and religious compositions from different genres and periods with particular attention to the socio-historical contexts and cultural functions of the different texts. The texts we read this semester included select portions from the Myth of Adapa (Amarna version), Ištar’s Descent to the Netherworld, Old Babylonian Gilgamesh (Pennsylvania tablet), Marduk’s Address to the Demons, Old Babylonian incantations (one against Lamaštu and one against a Black Dog), the Old Assyrian Sargon Narrative, Hymn to Ištar, and the Poor Man of Nippur. The translation and discussion of these texts was supplemented by secondary reading and bi-weekly presentations on issues such as the function of red dots in Egyptian scribal education and the Amarna texts, Mesopotamian conceptions of the afterlife, demonology and magic, and humor in Mesopotamia. My presentation was on Dreams in Mesopotamia in which I discussed, inter alia, typological models for classifying dream types in the Mesopotamian and broader ancient Near Eastern worldview(s). While there was no final exam, we did have a midterm exam which included two seen and one unseen text (in cuneiform of course).

Egyptian History Seminar: One of the benefits of the Johns Hopkins program is an emphasis on the interdisciplinary study of the entire ancient Near East. Therefore, all students in the department must complete a three-year Near Eastern history cycle including a year of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Syro-Palestinian history. The focus of this academic year is Egyptian history, and the focus of this semester was Egyptian history from the Predynastic Period to the end of the 18th dynasty. A primary focus of the class was on historiographical method. What I liked most about this class, besides the delightful teacher who obviously spent a lot of time in preparation for each class, were two written assignments in which we were responsible for writing an abstract/précis on two foreign language articles (specifically, in French). These were welcome assignments since I needed to take my French proficiency exam by the end of the semester anyway. A highlight of this class was a guest lecture by Vincent Morel, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University. Otherwise, I also co-presented a presentation on Narmer and the unification of Egypt between myth and reality as well as wrote my final paper on the same topic.

Elementary Sumerian: One of my goals each year is to begin formally studying at least one new ancient or modern language. This year I began studying two: Sumerian and Coptic. Sumerian is certainly one of the most difficult languages to learn, and for all the obvious reasons that need not be rehearsed here. Nevertheless, it was certainly a rewarding experience, and I don’t think I’ve made as much progress in a single initial semester of learning any other language, ancient or modern. Each week was devoted to one aspect of the grammar, e.g. the modal prefixes of the verbal chain, as well as reading 2-3 texts from Volk’s Chrestomathy. By the end of the semester, we could more or less sight-read basic royal inscriptions from rulers such as Ur-Nanše, Enmetena, Gudea, and Ur-Nammu, some of my translations of which can be found here.

Intro to Coptic (audit): My sixth class this semester was an audit of first-semester Coptic. My previous study of Egyptian language is limited to one year of Middle Egyptian, so this was a fun way to delve deeper into my peripheral interest of Egyptian grammar and linguistics. Throughout the semester we completed the 30 lessons in Lambdin’s Introduction to Sahidic Coptic. Next semester, Advanced Coptic, is devoted to reading texts.

Extracurriculars

In addition to these six classes and the French language exam, I also participated in a number of extracurricular activities both within and outside of the university, including department lectures by Tallay Ornan, Elaine James, Jana Mynářová, and Alex de Voogt. I also participated in a couple website projects other than the present one, which inspired the creation of The Semitic Studies Online Library in November of 2023. Finally, no doubt one of the most enjoyable experiences in which I have the pleasure of participating is a weekly Semitics reading group wherein the participants select, read, and discuss primary and secondary readings associated with a wide variety of topics related to Semitic studies. In particular, I led discussions on Middle Aramaic, Aramaic magic, and the Aramaic Targums.

Conclusion (Year in Review)

With that being said, let’s step back and reflect on the year as a whole. In the Spring of 2023, I also completed six classes: Seminar in Ancient Israelite Religion; Seminar in the Minor Prophets; Advanced Akkadian (Ekalte); Seminar in Near Eastern History: Mesopotamia; Middle Egyptian II; and Reading and Translating German for Academic Purposes II. I spent my summer studying in Europe, first in Berlin studying German at Freie Universität Berlin followed by two weeks in Leiden to attend the Universiteit Leiden’s Summer School in Languages and Linguistics, which included coursework in Historical Hebrew Grammar, Ge’ez, Safaitic, and Proto-Afro-Asiatic. In addition to these, I took two online classes in Classical Ethiopic (Ge‘ez) through The Catholic University of America’s Semitics department’s Summer Language Program. While in Europe, I also traveled around to various other cities, such as a delightful weekend trip to Hamburg whence I attended a conference on Ethiopic historiographical texts. After these eight weeks of intense study, I concluded my European studies with a cruise from Italy to Slovenia, France, and Spain, arriving back to the states just in time to begin the Fall 2023 semester (see above). As I finish writing this post on the first day of 2024, I can honestly say that 2023 has been one of the most enriching and edifying years, especially academically, of my life so far. But may the best of 2023 be the worst of 2024.

About The Author

Matthew Saunders

Matthew Saunders is a PhD student in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He researches the languages and literatures of the ancient Near East, especially Aramaic Studies, Ugaritic Studies, and Comparative Semitics.

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