Programme
When deciding what to study you undoubtedly read a lot of information about your study programme. Leiden University employs various systems to provide information about programmes and courses and to facilitate communication between lecturers and students.
The Prospectus contains information about all the courses within your study programme. Here you can find all you need to know about your programme. Via the online learning environment Brightspace you can communicate with your lecturers and submit assignments.
The master's programmme in Classics and Ancient Civilizations provides comprehensive training covering the entire range of present-day research on the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, Egypt and the Near East.
Characteristic for the programme is its focus on reading ancient texts in the original languages (from the beginning of history in Egypt and Mesopotamia up to the Medieval and Renaissance texts in Neo-Latin, Coptic or Hebrew) and discussing the different interpretations that the texts allow.
The staff offers expertise in the world of the Hebrew Bible, emerging Christianity, ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt (ancient, antique and late-antique) and Greco-Roman Antiquity, all seen from a multidisciplinary perspective. Traditional philology with its intimate knowledge of languages and texts, while still indispensable, is enriched by social history and political theory, comparative literature, the study of religion in an anthropological perspective and archaeology and material culture.
Check out the Prospectus for more information
The programme has a wide range of specialisation possibilities.
Specialisations
Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
In addition to the four tracks in the master's and research master's programmes, the Chair for the History and Culture of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (AJEC), held by Jürgen K. Zangenberg, regularly offers classes on Jewish history, literature and culture in the Greco-Roman world and on the origins and early history of emerging Christianity. Many of these classes have a strong archaeological focus. They are open for students from all specialisations and also form part of the History programme.
Through the Chair AJEC, Leiden University is partner of Kinneret Regional Project (KRP). All students in Classics and Ancient Civilizations are invited to participate in KRP's excavation and field school programme at Horvat Kur and Tel Kinrot on the Lake of Galilee (Israel).