Ancient Objects
Stories from the Ancient Near East
Leiden University, Faculty of Humanities
Things tell stories about humans, and the way they lived. These stories are, of course, especially valuable when dealing with ancient history, as no humans from that time are able to tell their stories for themselves. Let us not forget: what is ancient now, was once brand new.
Leiden University's BA program Ancient Near Eastern Studies deals with especially those stories, from the millennia-long history of the ancient Near East, spanning from Egypt to Syria, Greece to Iran. In the second year course Museology of the Ancient Near East, taught in the Rijkmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden, we discuss the way museums treat, have treated, and should treat those stories, and teach students to extract them themselves.
In the course of the class, students create their own small exhibit under a specific theme, incorporating objects from the National Museum of Antiquities, as well as other world museums. The objects you see here are each carefully selected by a student from their own exhibit: all objects that cannot wait to tell their stories!
Instructors / Zone curators
Jan Gerrit Dercksen & Miriam Müller
Editorial guidance
Kiki Freriks
