Undergraduate students have wide-ranging choices in courses including introductory language, history and archaeology as well as topical classes on subjects such as Egyptian and Mesopotamian religion, literature, and science. Many of our classes are open to all students at Brown and have no prerequisites. Concentrators in the department have the option of following tracks in either Egyptology or Assyriology. Both tracks provide students with a solid background in the field through exposure to the critical study of these ancient cultures using the tools of archaeology, epigraphy, and historical inquiry, and a variety of interdisciplinary, comparative, and theoretical approaches in order to explore these regions’ ancient languages and literatures, political and socio-economic modes of organization, art and architecture, religious traditions and other systems of knowledge, such as ancient exact sciences.

At the graduate level, students may pursue one of three tracks to the PhD: Egyptology, Assyriology, or the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity. Each track is designed to provide students with the skills needed to undertake high quality research in their respective field. In addition, our PhD program pays close attention to the professional development of our students, in particular through training in teaching, the writing of journal articles, and presenting papers at conferences. Our students regularly present their work at international conferences and publish in the main journals in our fields, and participate fully in departmental research seminars.