Write up your world museums project
You should write up your World Museums Project in any word processing program, save your document in a standard format (.doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt are all fine; avoid saving it as a .pdf or .pages document) and upload into the assignment found on Blackboard in the World Museums Project area of the course menu.
STEP 1. Your assignment is to virtually “visit” 4 international museums with renowned Egyptian collections:
– the British Museum in London,
– the Louvre Museum in Paris,
– the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and
– the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
STEP 2. Pick one ancient Egyptian object from each museum, making sure that all 4 objects are linked by a common thread: they must be the same or similar type of object, share the same or similar function, and say something about a single topic or theme in Egyptian archaeology, art, society, religion, etc.
Begin your assignment by putting your name at the top of the page. Then, provide a list of your 4 objects including (for each individual object):
– the url link from the museum’s website,
– the title of the object as supplied by the museum’s website
– the registration/accession/object number as supplied by the museum’s website
o (see the illustrated instructions at the end of this document for details on this)
So, the start of your World Museums Project should look like this if you were using the 4 objects illustrated at the end of this document (information in italic font is provided for instructional purposes on how/where to find the object’s number):
Pay attention to accuracy here. You will lose points if this information is not here since I will need to be able to use it to confirm which object you chose and look at its webpage myself.
NOTE 1: Make sure that your url for the University of Pennsylvania Museum object is accurate. After you click on the image for the object and it pops up, you MUST click on the “view object” link and provide the url for the full information page to the object.
NOTE 2: I seriously advise against choosing the same objects as any friends you may have in the class. It will probably be very hard to differentiate your discussions if you end up choosing the same objects. Any submissions with the same or similar grouping of objects will automatically be scrutinized for plagiarism.
STEP 3. Write up a discussion of how your 4 objects illustrate one specific aspect about ancient Egyptian culture – something about its art, architecture, society, economy, politics, or religion, etc. – that you have read about in your three assigned textbooks (Bard, Robins, or Brewer and Teeter) or any other reading assigned for this class (Simpson, Lichtheim, Reeder, etc.). No research on the internet or in other sources should be done. All assignments will be run through an automated program checked for plagiarism and copying from internet sources.
Your discussion must:
– be written in full, well-composed sentences, fully proofread and checked for all errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation.
– be 500 words in length.
– demonstrate a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the sources (your textbooks, etc.).
o DO NOT simply quote or reword the textbook’s ideas, but show that you understand what they are saying and the ideas being presented in your own words.
– integrate all 4 objects into the discussion, looking at all of them specifically and demonstrating that they are all indeed solid representations of a single idea or theme.
o DO NOT, for instance, simply write up something about statues and randomly pick 4 statues assuming that they all support your discussion; just because they are statues does not automatically make them similar or mean that they all represent a single, specific concept; consider issues of function, use, chronological date, etc.
– provide citations referencing the page or pages of the assigned readings from which you get your information; you MUST use at least 2 different textbooks or assigned readings or articles.
o To do this, simply supply the author’s name and page numbers of the relevant material in parentheses after the sentence or sentences which discuss the information you read about.
Here are some screen-caps of objects on “display” in each of the Museums’ websites. Use these for reference if you are struggling to figure out what the “title” and “object number” part of the assignment in STEP 2 above means.
Title of object is “Inlay”
Title of object is “Coffin, reused for Prince Amenemhat”
Title of object is “Akhenaton and Nefertiti”
Title of object is “Funerary cloth of Isetnefret”
