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Calling on all Egyptologists at Uni....

Hello Egytologist student or just person who's bored so reads every new thread that comes up

I've just finished my AS levels, getting results soon, and already moving onto A level study. My A levels are History, Maths and Economics

By this point you may be wondering wtf is Egyptology doing in the title? Well that's the gem I want to do at Uni, and although my career guy at my school assures me that it is a useful degree, I want to find out what people who are studying it/have studied it at uni think about it.

I already know roughly what the syllabus would be like, but I want know how it's taught, what the people are like who study it (I've heard its appealing to older generations and foreigners?) and what job prospects graduates experience.

Please help me out, my parents are reallly old fashioned and think it's a joke subject and that all I can do afterwards is become a history teacher or work in a museum! :eek3:
Reply 1
Avatar for rkd
rkd
12
I'm not an Egyptologist, but you're unlikely to find many of them on here, and I am an ancient historian, which is closer than any other subject to Egyptology in terms of method and so forth. It's certainly not a joke subject, by any means - Oxford and Cambridge both offer it, and it's essentially a conglomerate of history, art history, archaeology and languages.

As to how it's taught, that will vary a lot between universities - at Oxford, for example, there will be intensive language classes, lectures on Egyptian archaeology and history etc., and tutorials based around your weekly essays on those. Other courses may have fewer essays and more focus on small-group seminars - basically, it's very variable.
Reply 2
Avatar for devil09
devil09
7
I'm an Egyptology student, although my education has mostly been in the US. I did spend quite a bit of time studying at Swansea, though.

At Swansea and Liverpool (and Birmingham, I believe), Egyptology is offered in the form of lecture-based modules. Language modules usually have 30 or fewer students; some of the archaeology modules can have 50 more students. My Egyptian history module had over a hundred. Grading was mostly based on essays and exams. The art/archaeology offerings at Swansea were nice because you got to use actual pieces in the Egyptian collection. I'm sure Oxford and Cambridge make use of their collections as well.


In terms of employment, it depends on what you want to do. If you're simply using it as a stepping stone to a career, it's not a bad degree to have. For example:

http://career.studentaffairs.duke.edu/files/majors/information/classics.pdf

http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/majors/clst.html
http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/college/majors/ames.html

If you're planning to make Egyptology a career, your jobs prospects are much worse. It's an extremely tiny field with very little turnover.

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