ANST-401 Lessons

Hello, students, and welcome to Ancient Studies! My name is Professor Epona Salvatrix and I am extremely pleased to be here at Hogwarts with all of you. Some of you may have run into me around the castle in your previous years, especially if you are in Slytherin. In addition to Ancient Studies, I also enjoy a close professional relationship with Professor Wessex, the Mythology professor, as Mythology also begins this year and will talk about the same areas of the world, just through different lenses. I mention this now as you will often hear about what they are covering in their class and how it might help you with your studies here. Suffice it to say they are certainly “sister classes” though one is not required to take the other. With introductions and preliminary explanations out of the way, if you need to get in contact with me at any time, please send me an owl or write a post on my profile.

Before we begin our lesson in earnest, there is a bit of housekeeping to be done so that we are all on the same page when it comes to how this class and its assignments will work.

Course Outline

Each year of Ancient Studies will cover a continental area (or two) of the world. This year, we will cover Africa and the Middle East, ranging from Egypt to Mesopotamia, with many interesting topics. In the following years, we’ll travel to different continents and see what they have to offer. A program for both the details of this year, as well as what is to come in upcoming years, is listed below.

Ancient Studies Year Four Syllabus

Week One: Magic vs. Religion, Shifting Boundaries
Week Two: Ancient Egyptian Magic
Week Three: The Pyramids of Ancient Egypt
Week Four: The Light of Alexandria
Week Five: Notes from a Curse-breaker
Week Six: Ancient Mesopotamia
Week Seven: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Week Eight: The Tower and the Scroll
Week Nine: Here at the End of All Things

Ancient Studies Complete Outline

Year Four: Africa and the Middle East
Year Five: Europe
Year Six: The Americas
Year Seven: Asia and Oceania

As far as what information will be covered, that about does it! The only thing I feel it useful to add is that, on occasion, you may wish to augment your understanding with additional outside information. This is fine and actually encouraged! Just be sure to include a link or reference to where you found the information!

Administrative Bits

I’m sure by this point in your Hogwarts’ career, one of your immediate questions is about the homework load. Let me demystify that a bit. In any given lesson, it is equally likely that you will be assigned an essay or quiz. Sometimes you will only have one or the other, which means essays will be fairly common. Never fear, though! I do try to make them interesting as well as reasonable, and I will clearly state the grading rubric in the prompt for each assignment. Speaking of rubrics, let me direct you to what I like to call the “standard grading rubric” for Ancient Studies. 

Content (varies depending on each essay): 70%
Word Count: 15%
Spelling and Grammar: 10%
(A lack of) Identifying Marks: 5%

While the “content” points will vary from essay to essay, depending on the topic, the specific breakdown of points for this larger section will be noted in the essay prompt (unless doing so would give you the answers or information I’m testing you on). Word count, spelling and grammar, and identifying marks all stay the same with the same values for each essay, but let me touch on how to get points for each of those categories while I still have your attention. First, the word count section is broken up into sections, so you can receive either full points, two thirds points, one third points, or no points, depending on how short you fall when trying to reach the minimum word count. Regarding spelling and grammar errors, if you avoid these completely in your essay, you get full points! Similarly, you get points in this category on a sliding scale based on how many errors you have. You can lose any number of points based on how prevalent and confusing your errors are. Finally, we come to “identifying marks.” To clarify, to get points in this category, you want to avoid using identifying marks including your name, house, dorm, or friends’ names. Anything that points to you, leave it out just to be on the safe side. This is to ensure that the grader has no way of picking your essay out of a pool of hundreds of others, which prompts unbiased, completely fair grading. If you create a journal entry or short story, simply use aliases or initials for names!

We have just a few more brief notes on assignments, starting with extra credit. If your work goes above and beyond what the prompt asks of you, you may receive some extra house points (between one and five). So if your work is spectacular, you could easily find yourself walking away with 100% and 15 House points on an assignment! If, for any reason, you have a question about an assignment’s directions, the wording of a question, or general content, make sure to send an owl before submitting your assignment. If you know you do not understand the question as you’re doing the assignment, but submit it anyway, you will not be able to appeal that grade.

On a similar topic of asking for help, if you are a non-native English speaker (also called a “NES” on Hogwarts is Here), or a student with a learning disability, please be sure to put a tag identifying the essay as written by a person of these categories so that the essay can be graded accordingly. For example, a student that does not speak English as their first language would have leeway with spelling and grammar as long as the assignment is comprehensible, and students with a learning disability would have the same leeway.

However, there is one area of assignments and academics at Hogwarts that no one is excused from: plagiarism! Plagiarism, otherwise known as “passing off someone else’s work as your own” will not be tolerated in any way, shape, or form. This includes copying and pasting from the lesson, as well as copying essays from other students. Any assignment that contains plagiarism (whether an essay or a quiz) will be marked as a 0 with no chance to retake, regardless of any amount of pleading. If you are not clear on what plagiarism is, or if X, Y, Z counts as plagiarism, I advise you to ask me before submitting the assignment.

Magic and Religion

Now, onto the good stuff! We transition now into talking about two concepts that will be incredibly prevalent in this class over the next four years. It can be quite easy to confuse the concepts of magic and religion when examining ancient civilizations. Given the rudimentary knowledge of magic that many of these societies had, it is not surprising that magic and religion were often mixed in their daily lives.

For our purposes, however, we must make a distinction between the two concepts to have any hope at unravelling the mysteries of these societies. For the purposes of this class, we will use the following definitions:

Magic: The art of producing a desired effect or result by connecting with and channeling the energies around us through spells, enchantments, and other manipulations.

Religion: A particular system of faith and worship.

In many ancient civilizations, magic was incorporated into religious practices and rites, but was not a religion of its own accord.

For example, a religion may use an incantation or spell on a field of wheat. The spell may be part of a religious rite to ask their god of the harvest to bless the field and allow it to prosper. The magic of the spell (whether realized by the caster or not) then causes the field to grow faster and thicker. After that, the god’s followers credit the god for the abundant harvest.

While in this example (and many others) these two concepts are intricately related, it is not the magic that is being worshipped, but the effect that the magic has, which is interpreted as a gift from the gods rather than something humans have done.

Shifting Boundaries

Another concept we must take into account when discussing ancient civilizations is the changing borders of history. Many centuries have passed since the civilizations we will study flourished, and their political boundaries have changed many, many times. Wherever possible, I will be using the name of the geographical area used at the time of the civilization we are discussing. I will also endeavour to give you an idea of where the civilization existed in terms of current political boundaries.

It is not simply the geographical boundaries that have shifted, however. These civilizations also do not fit into the current world in terms of their physical, ethnic, or religious aspects. Take care to avoid subjecting any ancient civilization to scrutiny based on your expectations of today's inhabitants of the same geographical area.

What I mean by this is that we cannot judge these societies by our ethical standards. For example, the topic of human sacrifice will come up in several situations. I’m sure most, if not all of us in this classroom find the idea appalling, but we have to ensure that we examine these practices from the perspective and cultural norms of the society that we are studying. In these cultures, it was not viewed as an evil, cruel, or violent act. Nor was it illegal! It’s important to avoid accidentally viewing a person as an antagonist because of their involvement in practices we find abhorrent, as this was the norm in their society at the time. Simply put, while we are a product of our past, ancient civilizations cannot and should not be judged by using today’s standards and expectations.

Closing

And that is enough philosophy for today! I have kept the lesson relatively short, and your assignment will be equally so. We will begin discussing the ancient Egyptians in our next lesson, so be sure to wear some sandals and sunblock! In the meantime, this week’s assignments ask you to explain the difference between magic and religion in your own words, and also ask a bit about your expectations for this class. 

Image credits here and here
Original lesson written by Professor Liria Morgan