Ptahmose

Sparky, thanks for clarifying. That makes sense.

I'm a college senior who applied to Egyptology programs this year and got rejected by most of my programs; thankfully I did get into the MA program at Toronto. I was told by several professors that they would have loved to have me but that other applicants in the department had stronger language backgrounds, which set me to thinking. Why are modern Middle Eastern and ancient Near Eastern studies in the same departments? Applicants to Middle Eastern studies programs have several advantages. Their languages are usually readily available, or at least far more so than ancient languages.They can more easily study abroad or work in their countries for experience; most Mesopotamian sites are out of bounds even to professional archaeologists, college students are rarely allowed to dig in Egypt, and the only useful type of domestic experience (museum work) is limited to a very few, highly selective places/institutions with good Egyptian/Near Eastern collections.Applicants for Middle Eastern studies can and do also apply to a wide range of programs in history, political science, international relations, and the like. Egyptologists/Assyriologists don't have such a luxury. With the notable exceptions of Brown and Johns Hopkins, applicants for the ancient tracks of Near Eastern departments are always in the same pool as applicants with several years of Arabic/Hebrew/etc., study abroad experience in Lebanon/Israel/Syria/etc., and so on, which seems unequal. It's also highly unfortunate, I think, that many departments alternate in admitting ancient and modern students each year due to funding constraints, which makes the already depressingly small number of departments available to ancient applicants (8 or so) even smaller. Thoughts?