CLASS 383B/AFST 383C/ANTH 380P Take-home Midterm exam _____________________________

In your essay answers to these questions, you may use any authorized resources (books, notes, handouts, outside sources within reason – I don’t want to see what Wikipedia has to say on all these subjects), but ALL WORK MUST BE YOUR OWN (you cannot do this as a group assignment or discuss the questions with anyone else in class) and you will sign a pledge at the end to assure me of that. No time restriction. Must be turned in as a hard copy (NO ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS) by end of workday (5 PM) Friday, April 16 at my office, Library Tower 1102. TYPE your answers 1 1/2 spaced, Times New Roman font 12 point, for ease of grading and comments.

For each of these 5 questions (20 pts each) use 1.75-2 pages (you may go over this limit, but if you are under 1.75 pages, you have not properly answered these complex questions) to give a complete answer to these larger questions about the ethnic groups of ancient North Africa. You must use proper citation of sources for your evidence (page numbers of class texts will suffice – if the source is a primary text such as poem, papyrus, other quote, be sure to refer to the original source as well as the page number in your modern text). Please DO NOT waste space on your essay pages by including the question as part of the 2 pages.

1. Choose 4 specific examples of how Jews in Egypt adapted their Jewish culture and traditions to their lives as Egyptian citizens, whether under Persian, Macedonian Greek or Roman rule – your various observations should include ways that some maintained or tried to maintain their traditional ethnic practices, and how others walked away from or seriously changed their ethnic practices to adapt to their lives as ‘Egyptians.’ Write at least 4-5 sentences presenting and explaining each example. I recommend that you choose some material from early in the book and some from late in the book to give a more complete chronological picture of how Jews adapted to Egyptian, Ptolemaic and Roman rule.

2. Herodotus extensively discusses the general everyday lives and habits of Egyptians at two specific places in his text, pp. 108-114 and pp. 124-129, and then gives a separate assessment of the lives of Egyptians in the lower marsh country (pp. 129-131). Identify and explain 3 ways these separate discussions are quite similar, and 4 ways they are very different (a single difference = this Herodotus passage suggests x, but this passage indicates y). Then briefly give your opinion on why Herodotus used these separate descriptions of the Egyptian people.

3. Condense Snowden Blacks in Antiquity chapter 8 on ancient Greek and Roman attitudes toward Ethiopians down into 4 major conclusions that he makes about those attitudes. For each of your 4 conclusions cite and briefly discuss several examples Snowden uses to prove his point (these can be texts or artifacts – do note that you may also use materials discussed in other chapters as part of the conclusions reached in Chapter 8).

4. For Bowman’s chapter on ‘Greeks and Egyptians,’ found on these links 121-135, 136-150, 151-164, , identify, discuss and explain any 6 different pieces of evidence that indicate how native Egyptians were living and making their way under foreign rule in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. You should specifically look at the discussion and documents recorded on the first link pp.4-8, 11-14, second link pp. 14-15+third link pp. 1-4, and third link pp. 8-9 and 13-14. Notice that the first section deals with governmental policies and legal concerns, the second with health, food, living circumstances and occupations, and the third deals with literacy and literary choices in demotic Egyptian. Use these loose categories as a guide for the types of examples you should be seeking in the documents

5. We have now read many different examples of cultural appreciation and ethnic prejudice toward Egyptians, Ethiopians and Jews. Choose 1 specific example of how Greeks or Romans treated each of these groups with some sense of respect and dignity and 1 specific example of how Greeks or Romans showed them great hatred and prejudice (total of 6 examples). Pair your examples together (good and bad for Egyptians, good and bad for Ethiopians, good and bad for Jews) and highlight the different circumstances, ways of thinking, and cultural differences that explain how these very different opinions came to be expressed about these ethnic groups. In other words, try to explain how generalizing the ways Greeks and Romans viewed these people is just as wrong and impossible as stereotyping all members of the ethnic group as if they all do the same things all the time. Don't reuse identical material you have already discussed in answering questions above.

Write and sign an Honor Pledge on your exam before turning it in. I wish you all the best of luck and a good couple of weekends, including your spring break. Show me what you've learned.