Writing Assignment 2

Assignment 2: Due Monday at midnight!

For this piece, students complete two complementary yet distinct pieces of work:

1) A mock-up ‘Facebook’ page, detailing the activities, accomplishments, interests etc. (life history; associated material culture; relatives and known contemporaries) of an Ancient Egyptian figure, however defined, within the chronological limits of the course. There is not enough space on the wiki for all of you to post these there, so please construct these as word documents. There are, however, some restrictions on which figures you can choose. Do not select Akhenaten or Nefertiti. You can, however, select private or royal people for your project.

2) An annotated bibliography for at least five sources, no more than one of which can be a class textbook. The format should present a complete bibliographic reference followed by a paragraph outlining the scope of the book or article, the overall argument of the piece, the utility of the book, what information influenced the construction of your Facebook page, and the strengths and weaknesses of the book’s/article’s arguments. If, for instance, you use a source for the ‘profile page’, then you should make this clear in the annotated bibliography. This should be done for all five (or more!) of your references. I highly recommend that you look at articles as well as books. Very few individuals from ancient Egypt have whole 'biographies' about them - you will get much more specific information from articles. Good ways to find articles include chasing bibliography from your first, book sources, and doing searches at JSTOR. If you aren't familiar with it, jstor.org is a subscription service (Brown subscribes so if you're on a Brown computer or the vpn you can access it) that is a database of huge numbers of scholarly journals. Their archives of articles tend to be reasonably complete though not quite up to date. Not all Egyptological journals are on there, but a good number are, and the search engine is quite good. Going to journals can also be a great way to find a person. For instance, I randomly picked up the 1988 copy of Journal of Egyptian Archaeology and found that it had four articles that are about specific people who would make admirable projects (a married couple with a tomb at Saqqara; Akhenaten's secondary wife; a Vizier, and a Royal Butler). Any one of those articles would give you the specific information you need; you could then go to more general sources to flesh out the time periods involved and pick friends for them.

The first piece, executed in word document format, should more or less correspond to the standard Facebook format including: a profile page with basic information about the historical personage alongside a distinctive image and a ‘wall’ (message board); an information page, explaining wider interests, activities, groups to which the individual belongs etc.; and a photos page. In constructing this, think about which people would be around as potential ‘friends’ of your figure. What events or monuments might these people talk about on their ‘walls’? (Humor for this section is definitely appreciated, as long as it is accurate!)

As an example, look on the course wiki, where Tom has posted a mock page of Akhenaten. (Note: Tom’s page is not complete, so you should go beyond the examples he has posted.) Here, there are notes from Ay, Nefertiti, Horemheb etc. Religious interests are the cult of the Aten. The information page reflects this, with ‘activities’ (founding new cities; partaking in the Heb-sed festival unusually early; conversing with the ‘peer’ Kings of the Near East) and ‘interests’ (novel temple architecture; the use of talalat; innovative royal portraiture) relating to the current state of knowledge about the Amarna period. The individual’s ‘photographs’ need to relate to this; Akhenaten’s photographs include his father’s colossi, a plan of Tell el-Amarna, the bust of Nefertiti from the House of the Sculptor, the Aten holding ankhs to the mouths of the royal family, and so on. There is a ‘friends’ page, in which other individuals contemporary to Akhenaten are listed (these need to be limited to near contemporaries); presumably family would be listed, but also other religious reformers, artistic innovators might also be included. This is, obviously, subjective to a degree, but the key issue in all these is that the student has to make the case for the friend, interest, activity, or photograph included in the annotated bibliography. If, for Narmer, King Scorpion is listed as a ‘friend,’ it has to be explained why this choice has been made.

You will be graded according to the quality of research as shown in your bibliographies; evidence that you have read the relevant portions of the sources you select; the comprehensiveness of coverage for the figure in your Facebook page; and innovativeness.

Have fun!

Tom's mini mock-up: [link]

word count: for each entry in your annotated bibliography, shoot for 200 words (1000 or more total). For the Facebook page, shoot for no fewer than 750 words. These are guidelines to help you feel grounded.

To cite images, refer to entry R for Web sites here: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html"" target="_blank">http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html"> target="_blank">[link] target="_blank">http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html>>
You will want a list of image sources at the end of your bibliography.

There is a reserve shelf set up at the Rock with some books that may help you either find a person or find information about someone you have already chosen. I apologize that they have been distressingly slow to reserve these, so that the long list of books we gave them two weeks ago are far from all on reserve. Because of this, my office remains one of the best sources of books if you are having trouble in this regard. E-mail me to set up an appointment. To see what is on reserve, type in ARCH0150 at this site: http://dl.lib.brown.edu/reserves/"" target="_blank">http://dl.lib.brown.edu/reserves/"> target="_blank">[link] target="_blank">http://dl.lib.brown.edu/reserves/>>

Please use your last name somewhere in the name of your file when submitting by e-mail. If your file is big, remember that I am going to get 75 e-mails in one night and my e-mail may crash. Consider saving in a compressed format (on a Mac you can save as a pdf, then compress the pdf in Preview - I assume there is an equivalent way to do this on a pc). Because file size may be a problem, I will e-mail a receipt to everyone when I get your assignment so that you can rest assured it has been received. This means if you haven't heard from my by late Tuesday morning, I haven't gotten anything from you.

Thanks for your patience and creativity as we work together to make this a viable assignment! Your questions and input are helping us craft it so that next time we give a similar assignment it will be clearer from the start.

As further questions may be relevant to everyone, let's open the space below for discussion of the assignment and the TAs and I will regularly check. You may also answer one another if you have ideas that have worked for you.

Posted at Nov 18/2009 11:27AM:
Sam H: A few questions: can I (or do I have to) incorporate events relevant to my person that happened after he died? And can I make up personal histories, like a strained relationship between a son and mom?

Posted at Nov 18/2009 11:33AM:
Prof B: You may pick any point in your person's life or death from which to write, though I would ask you to be consistent. Since the Egyptians definitely considered the dead to continue to interact with the living, it isn't unreasonable to have your dead person aware of what happened later (so Tom could have had Akhenaten get really livid about the destruction of Amarna, for instance). I'd encourage you not to put yourself too far into the future (what happens immediately after your death is quite relevant, but no one has been giving you offerings for 1000s of years so it's a bit of a stretch to say you're still sentient at the time your tomb was found by Carter - you might be able to convince me if you do it well, but my instinct is to say steer clear of this). But again, this is a very creative assignment, so if you can be consistent within your approach and fit the facts as known, it should work. Same goes if you want to pick a point in the life of your person - so long as you are consistent, it should be just fine.

Your second question gets a somewhat similar answer. As long as your family feuds don't contradict the evidence, make them up to your heart's content. If you have lots of evidence of family then you should weave what we know into your relationships; if we have little or no evidence then you'll have more leeway. If you want to look at some family relationships that have come down to us, check out the publication of some MK letters written by a guy called Heqanakht. He was away from home and wrote often to his family, telling them how to run the minutae of the farm while he was gone but also telling them to stop ostracizing his young wife, etc. A real slice of personality from ancient Egypt, which is rare.

Posted at Nov 18/2009 07:15PM:
Sara Powell: On my Facebook page, I'd like to have some important events commemorated in my photo album. Since I can't find depictions of every event, can I draw my own? (And by 'draw' I mean... MS Paint.)

Posted at Nov 19/2009 09:03AM:
Prof. B: Absolutely! MS paint or Photoshop yourself into existing scenes, make them up entirely, etc (if you're going to make them up it might be fun to try to stick broadly to the conventions of Egyptian art). Don't forget to give yourself credit in the image citation list.

Posted at Nov 19/2009 06:54PM:
aiarocci: I am still confused what exactly an annotated bibliography should be. Could you possibly post an example entry?

Posted at Nov 19/2009 07:22PM:
aiarocci: Also, a lot of my sources repeat the same basic facts. In my bibliography, who should I attribute the information to?

Posted at Nov 19/2009 08:42PM:
aiarocci: One final question, can we use the online metropolitan museum of art online collection database? here is a link http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/all/listview.aspx?page=1&sort=0&sortdir=asc&keyword=kiya&fp=1&dd1=0&dd2=0&vw=1"" target="_blank">http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/all/listview.aspx?page=1&sort=0&sortdir=asc&keyword=kiya&fp=1&dd1=0&dd2=0&vw=1"> target="_blank">[link] target="_blank">http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/all/listview.aspx?page=1&sort=0&sortdir=asc&keyword=kiya&fp=1&dd1=0&dd2=0&vw=1>>

thank you!

Posted at Nov 20/2009 09:07AM:
Prof. B: Good questions. I'll post a link to a university website talking about annotated bibliographies in general:

http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill28.html"" target="_blank">http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill28.html"> target="_blank">[link] target="_blank">http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/skill28.html>>

A sample bibliography entry, matched to Tom's mock-up of Akhenaten, might be thus:

Redford, Donald. Akhenaten: The Heretic King. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Redford’s study is a fairly thorough look at the reign of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten, set within the context of the 18th Dynasty and Egypt’s militaristic endeavors in the Near East. It is designed for an advanced student rather than a scholar looking for a comprehensive analysis of any particular aspect of the religion, art or archaeology of this period. Redford’s main foci are the international politics of the era, the spiritual meanings of Akhenaten’s religion, and the building projects of Amenhotep IV at Thebes. He is less complete in discussing the site of Amarna itself. The focus on Karnak is especially welcome because Redford was the driving force behind excavations and talatat reconstructions there for many years; no scholar is better able to comment upon this period of the reign. In constructing my Facebook page I have thus relied heavily on this work for the Thebes years and therefore for the relationship between Amenhotep IV and Nefertiti, who was prominently featured in the Karnak buildings. For the religion of the Amarna period I found Hornung to be a more balanced, documented and detailed source, and for the site of Amarna I relied heavily on both Kemp and the recent publication of Silverman and Wegner. Finally, a somewhat narrative style and an injection of the author’s own feelings diminish the scholarly usefulness of Redford’s book. (The last sentence of the book is “I cannot conceive a more tiresome regime under which to be fated to live.” Similarly, the use of the word “heretic” in the very title of the book biases rather than illuminates discussion.) This is, however, an extremely common failing in scholarship of the Amarna period.

When sources overlap, you should attribute thigns to both of them (you would do this in a more formal paper, too, citing two different works in the same footnote or parenthetical citation). If your sources both deal with a particular piece of information but disagree about it, you should discuss who you think gave the better argument and why. So if you have presented as fact something that is a matter of contention (which is fine) then you can use your annotation to tell me why you decided that was a better interpretation than the one advanced by a different author.

Regarding the Met website - you may use it, but it does not fulfill one of your 5 source requirements. You should still deal with it in your annotated bibliography (as in, treat it like any other source), but the purpose of having you look at a minimum of 5 authoured, print sources was to improve your research skills as much as it was to make sure you were getting a broad enough range of information. Most of the stuff on the Met's website can be found in print sources, too, such as Scepter of Egypt (old but still good) or specific catalogs (including one, since you appear to be doing Kiya, about the Royal Women of Amarna). Hope that helps!

Posted at Nov 20/2009 06:34PM:
Valerie Bondura: Hey, I don't want to be redundant, but I'm still confused about how to cite these images. The format on the Chicago website doesn't really seem to fit the images that I'm finding. Most of them are just pulled off of websites that cite them as "Cairo Museum/Getty Images" or something along those lines. Should I list what the image shows, where it is from, and the website I got the image from? Or is that not enough/incorrect? Thanks so much!

Prof. B: Don't apologize about redundancy! Start with a brief "title" of the website (like Cairo Museum/Getty Images); the actual citation proper itself does need to include the CMS url. It's the only unique signifier of the image (therefore like a citation to an authored work), and the point of the citation is less to tell me what it is than to tell me where you got it. Hope that helps!

Posted at Nov 21/2009 01:09PM:
Ishaan: Hi, quick question: regarding the articles on JSTOR, how would you want us to cite the articles (because they are online)?

Prof. B: Everything on JSTOR is a scanned version of something available in print. There fore cite it exactly as you would the print source. In this case, the important information is where the information was published, not where you accessed it. This is possible with JSTOR as opposed to things that are only published online because you have the page numbers, which are exactly the same as they are in the print version of journals.

Posted at Nov 21/2009 02:24PM:
Ishaan: Also, can we take information from the lectures? There's some information I've read in my notes that I haven't found in the books I'm referring to. If we can, how do we cite that?

If we do not have known names for architects/viziers, etc for our king, but we have sources describing their work, can we make up names for them?

Prof. B: It's generally bad form to get information from a lecture unless it was a public lecture given by someone who is working on material and therefore is discussing recent discoveries or interpretations. This applies more to evidence than to interpretation - if I've interpreted something in class in a way that you can't find in print then you should cite me. For a reference to some specific piece of information I mentioned, however, e-mail me off-wiki and I'll give you a source. And if I can't then you should totally challenge me!

Posted at Nov 21/2009 06:39PM:
Amanda Bauer: Hi Professor- If we have more than five sources, can a couple be less than 200 words in the annotations? For example, I have an interesting JSTOR article which is only about Hatshepsut's different names, which I would like to use, but it probably won't warrant 200 words of annotation.

Prof. B: 200 words was a guideline rather than a requirement. Certainly some articles about very specific topics may not warrant such a long entry. The most important thing is to make sure that each of your entries covers the necessary bases, disucssing the evidence discussed, point of view taken, and usefulness of each source (or part of the source you used - if you didn't need to read the whole book that is fine and your entry should be confined to the part you did read, with maybe the briefest of statements about the general scope of the work).

Posted at Nov 21/2009 08:07PM:
egypt09: kml

Prof. B: I don't get it? Possibly this is me (I don't speak text) but elaborate if you need an answer....

Posted at Nov 21/2009 09:13PM:
Amanda Bauer: Another question: I have a book which seems to be historically accurate, but the author did use a lot of speculation (probably to make it more interesting for a wider audience). Is it still ok to use that kind of source? The book is "Hatshepsut" by Evelyn Wells.

Prof. B: Does the author properly distinguish between what is fact and what is speculation? If so, then you can use it, though being careful to distinguish in your own work. One of my rules of thumb is: if there are footnotes, and they cite reasonable sources including things like excavation reports and either original texts or the translation thereof, then I can at least trust that the author has read what he/she was supposed to and I can use the source, though always with my eyes open of course. You can also decide to either agree or disagree with her speculation in this case - this assignment, after all, gives plenty of scope for your own wild theorizing within the facts!

Posted at Nov 22/2009 09:46AM:
nrwang: Hi, I am having the same problems as Valerie Bondura when citing my pictures. Here's an example of my citation for a picture. Could you tell me if the format is okay?

Shepherd, Mike. “Thutmose III.” '''' Mike Shepherd Images 17, Mar. 2008. 21, Nov. 2009 http://www.mikeshepherdimages.com/Prints/Thutmoses_111.html"" target="_blank">http://www.mikeshepherdimages.com/Prints/Thutmoses_111.html"> target="_blank">[link] target="_blank">http://www.mikeshepherdimages.com/Prints/Thutmoses_111.html>>

Prof. B: This looks good to me! I can tell at a glance what type of website you are looking at, you give a unique signifier that means you are not cheating the photographer of his credit, and I click on the link and get there immediately. Sounds like all bases covered!

Posted at Nov 22/2009 02:04PM:
aiarocci: is anyone else having trouble accessing Tom's page from the link at the top?

Prof. B: Somewhat worried about this, especially because I know you use a Mac and I'm not having any trouble at all so I don't know what to suggest...

Posted at Nov 22/2009 03:36PM:
nrwang: Aiarocci: Yes

Posted at Nov 22/2009 04:25PM:
aiarocci: Should our citations cover the whole book or just the chapters we used? If we just used chapters, should we use the chicago style citation for book or a chapter from the book?

Prof. B: Your discussion (annotation) should deal in depth only with the part you read (perhaps a sentence to the effect of "This general history book about Egypt covers from the Predynastic to the Roman Periods. I read only the chapter dealing with the Old Kingdom, which I found useful in blah blah blah blah ways." Precisely how to cite it depends on if it is a book authored by several people, or a single author. If a single author, then the chapter information doesn't belong in the citatation itself, but only in your annotation. If it is by several authors, then cite it as author (of chapter), title (of chapter) in editor (of book) in title (of book). CMS has guidelines on precisely how to do this, but your question is completley valid.

Posted at Nov 22/2009 05:00PM:
Brandon Tomasso: Can we draw from a poem written about our Egyptian? It seems relatively logical and historically based.

Do we know if Weni the Elder would have composed his own autobiography?

Prof. B: Hmm, poems are a grey area. Really there is information in there that you can't find anywhere else? (I'm assuming we're not talking about Shelley here...) Without having thought about it in huge detail, my gut reaction response is to say that if you use it for fun and color then you may do so, but it should be in addition to rather than instead of your 5 more traditional, information-based, sources.

For Weni, see below.

Posted at Nov 22/2009 05:52PM:
Hannah RJ: Do we know if Weni the Elder would have composed his own autobiography?

Prof. B: This is a can of worms! Authorship is a HUGE and contentious issue in Egyptology generally, and massively complicates arguments about things like literacy as well as who in fact composed specific pieces. Weni almost certainly was literate - the duties he describes in the royal court probably required it. I would say in this particular case it seems likely that he at the very least dictated what information would be included, and may well have authored it himself, but we cannot be conclusive about that. Even if individuals did author their own autobiographies, they did so within an extremely restricted literary genre that dictated a huge amout about style and content. If you're interested in issues of authorship and literacy I'd point you to several works by John Baines (with a slight warning - he can be a difficult read - but he almost always repays the attention he requires); start with some stuff collected in a book called Visual and Written Culture.

Posted at Nov 22/2009 08:38PM:
Prof. B: Sorry I have been offline until tonight! I'm going to post individual answers after each question, thinking it will cause the least confusion...

These are all really good questions, by the way.

Posted at Nov 22/2009 08:43PM:
Brandon Tomasso: Thanks, Prof B! Another question: How much weight can we attribute to Herodotus' histories and if not credible, can we at least (creatively of course!), support or refute them in our facebook, depending on how outlandish they are?

Prof. B: As an historian, you should give approximately zero credence to Herodotus when he gets any more complicated than saying things like "The Nile runs north. Egypt is in Africa. The Egyptians built really big stuff." I read him for comic relief. That said, I totally encourage you to read him for comic relief, too, and to incorporate him if you can do so in a reasonable way that makes it clear to me that you don't really think Egyptian women peed standing up. On a total side note, I read an interesting review article this weekend about, in many ways, the history of history. I think I'm going to assign it to my history class next semester but you might want to take a look at it for fun, too (you know, in all your spare time). It makes no difference to this assignment, so don't take time you don't have to read it, but I'm always interested in the issue of reading history in documents that were written for purposes quite different from what we regard as historical (and Herodotus may be the father of history, but he wasn't writing it for the same reasons we write it now at all, and as such he used his sources really differently than we do, and we have to be careful using him). I realize this is a tangent...

Aargh! The file requires subscription (I get it in print). I'm pretty sure Brown subscribes, so you can access it through the vpn or from school. This, therefore, may not be the link to the article itself, but it will tell you which review I was refering to.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=23466

Posted at Nov 22/2009 10:10PM:
Brandon Tomasso: Hahaha! I sort of suspected that about Herodotus! The link worked, I will definitely check it out after my facebook is done. Thanks so much!

Posted at Nov 23/2009 01:46AM:
Amanda Bauer: THanks for your responses. I have another question (again): I'm having trouble finding images for some of my "friends" such as the three Thutmoses, or Hatshepsut's mother Ahmose. Can I use images from the course website? How would I cite those? Is there another reliable source other than the MET website?

Prof B: You may use images from the course website, and also images from books that you scan instead of things you get online (then cite them like a book). It's also totally possible that you will have people for whom no image exists, and that's fine. Put some sort of place-holder, blank head, anonymous kind of thing in there, and I will laugh and not blame you!

Posted at Nov 23/2009 01:57AM:
Amanda Bauer: Oh and also, can we send the assignment to you as a google doc?

Prof. B: Hmm, I don't know as I've never received one. Try it out with a draft as soon as possible and I'll let you know by return e-mail if I can open it. If not, you'll have to turn it into a pdf (but this is usually easy from just about any program).

Posted at Nov 23/2009 12:11PM:
aiarocci: For the photo credits, would it be okay to just have a list at the end if i reference what page of the facebook its on and which photo its describing? ex. Facebook page six;

Image one: Purification Relief: “Relief Depicting the Purification of Queen Kiya.”Photograph. (n.b.) From Metropolitan Museum of Art New York Online Collection Database. http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/all/relief_depicting_the_purification_of_queen_kiya/objectview.aspx?page=1&sort=0&sortdir=asc&keyword=kiya&fp=1&dd1=0&dd2=0&vw=1&collID=0&OID=100000999&vT=1 (accessed November 22, 2009).

Prof B: Yes, in fact a list at the end is what I was thinking of myself. Looks good!

Posted at Nov 23/2009 09:00PM:
nrwang: Do you want our book citations and image citations separate or together?

Prof. B: I would prefer them as separate lists if possible.