Objectives

• To use provided primary and secondary sources to develop a historical thesis about the Early Dynastic period of Mesopotamia.
• To support your historical thesis with evidence in a formal essay assignment.

Description of Assignment

Using only the materials available from the course (textbook, course pages, specific webpages that link out from course pages, assigned primary sources Download assigned primary sources

) write a formal, historical essay (target length: 1000 words) that answers this question: Was the Early Dynastic period the first phase of "history" in Mesopotamia? To achieve this goal, you should evaluate the Early Dynastic (not another period) and should provide a definition of what "history" is. You may mention other periods, such as the Uruk, but focus your evaluation on the evidence from the Early Dynastic period.

The primary source readings detailing the Umma-Lagash border conflict (the Cooper readings) Download Cooper readings)

should be central to your arguments. Do these texts allow for historical reconstructions? Be sure to analyze the possibilities, limitations and potential biases of the sources.  You might find the page on how to read primary and secondary sources from this module helpful in this context.

You should also incorporate the secondary literature in your analysis: Chapter 3 in A History of the Ancient Near East, information from the Course Pages, as well as the list of primary sources from Mesopotamian history Download primary sources from Mesopotamian history

.

You should be careful to refer to all relevant information from your textbook, the assigned primary sources from Cooper and the course notes. You may use any of the readings assigned for the course so far. This is not a research paper and you have not been asked to use outside sources. If you choose to do so, all sources must be scholarly Links to an external site., not general interest, encyclopedias etc.

Aim to write efficiently and in an organized manner.  Irrelevant information, "fluff" and wordy constructions will be detrimental to grade on this assignment. Write organized paragraphs that include topic sentences which explain the content of the paragraph. Ensure that all sentences in a paragraph support the objective of the paragraph and that all words support the objectives of a sentence. All paragraphs, in turn, should support the mission of your essay, in other words, your thesis statement.

Required Formatting and Citation

You must cite all information (facts about the Early Dynastic sources, quotes etc.) and format your essay appropriately using the Chicago Manual of Style Links to an external site. (not some other style like MLA or APA).  Formatting refers to the organization of the paper in terms of title page, page numbers etc. You may cite course pages as web pages according to Chicago style. Here is an example paper Links to an external site.that shows correct formatting and citations using author-date style. If you are doing the assignment correctly, most sentences will include a citation (with page number). I have a slight preference for *author-date style* versus notes style but both are acceptable.  Failure to cite sources (must include page numbers) or the use of unapproved outside sources may result in a zero on this assignment.

Course pages should be cited as electronic resources (website) per the rules of Chicago style, the Van De Mieroop textbook as a book, and the primary sources PDF comes from: Full citation: Cooper, Jerold S. Sumerian and Akkadian Royal Inscriptions 1: Presargonic Inscriptions. American Oriental Society: New Haven (1986).

While you should reference the source of your assertions, you should not overuse direct quotations from the course materials. Typically, historians paraphrase (re-state) secondary literature and only quote primary source material when the exact wording is relevant to an argument that they are making.  Re-stating the texts' arguments in your own words develops your analytical abilities and is the appropriate historical style.

Rubric and Additional Resources

Please see the assignment rubric (below) for information on how the essays will be evaluated. Please review Rampolla's Guide to Writing for History Download Guide to Writing for History

for additional guidelines.

Questions?

Please send a Webcourses message to Dr. Earley-Spadoni by 5 PM EST the Friday before the assignment is due.