HUMS 140, The Hero in Ancient Near East

Meeting Time: 
TTh 9-10:15

Course Description:

Exploration of the interaction of religion, history, and literature in the ancient Near East through study of its heroes, including comparison with heroes, heroic narratives, and hero cults in the Bible and from classical Greece.

Led by:

Kathryn Slanski's picture

Professor Kathryn Slanski

Kathryn Slanski studies ancient Mesopotamia at the intersections of sources and approaches. Her work on a corpus of inscribed and sculpted monuments (The Babylonian Entitlement narûs (kudurrus): A Study in Form and Function, ASOR Books, 2003) led to further research on the relationships between text and image, as well as questions about monumentality, sacred and secular authority, and the ancient transmission and reception of literary, historical, religious and visual traditions. She is also interested in cultural connections between civilizations of the ancient Near East and the ancient Mediterranean. She teaches Mesopotamian and ancient Near Eastern literature, history, religion, law and justice, visual arts, and ancient languages. 

Kathryn Slanski is also on the History and Politics faculty of Yale’s Directed Studies Program, for which she teaches and serves as course coordinator. 

In addition to her 2003 book, she has also written on Mesopotamian social and economic history as well as verbal and visual representation of the divine. She is currently preparing a second book, which will provide new text editions and photographs of the corpus of Babylonian Entitlement monuments (kudurrus), including several unpublished inscriptions in the Yale Babylonian Collection, the British Museum, and the Louvre.