Enjoyable introduction to Ancient Egyptian History. Interesting subject matter although the topics that were of primary interest to me were not covered in the Introduction, I did however, gain a lot of broad stroke knowledge across a variety of topics. The supporting images added to the overall enjoyment of the course. It is a wonderful privilege indeed, to have access to Penn University - Dr Silverman and have his vast knowledge made so freely available to anyone wishing to participate. The quiz at the end of each course were not difficult and provided a focus to the learning. Thank you Penn University and in particular Dr Silverman.

The course is a good general knowledge introduction to Egypt, there is lots of information stuffed into each week. The lecturer's style is super dry, but the lectures are ultimately very useful. This course style is sometimes a bit disconnected, in that the information you are given is often handled purely as information, and not quite as often contextualized. This tends to make the quizzes, and discussion prompts feel disjointed, and challenging in the way that it's difficult to use your newfound knowledge in application. That being said, I really enjoyed the class as a very direct knowledge-gathering experience.

Good information, organized in an interesting and unique way. The graphics and labeling are beautiful.

The course is flawed, however, by the way the professor is obviously reading a script from a teleprompter. His delivery is uncomfortably slow. and. Awkward. withunatural. pauses. In. hisspeech. I wish he would just talk! He seems knowledgeable but his passion for the the subject is ruined by the stilted speech. My favorite video was the last one, where he and a lab technician are in a restoration lab, and the two of them are just talking. If the entire course had been that way, it would be a 5-star winner.

I did learn a few new things, but I would have to say the course is very easy to pass. The hardest part is the essay questions, but these are optional. Anyone having basic knowledge of Egyptian history could pass all the quizzes without doing anything else. You only have to get 50% correct.

The recorded lectures were good, but not great. The speaker is reading the transcript and it seems like for the first time. He is not speaking naturally and it's a bit stiff.

Nevertheless, for someone just starting, the course has all the essential information needed and you will learn a lot.

Course was intresting, material was explained in a way that most people would have understood it. Even without a degree in history or anything like that. However David P Silverman is not a person to be put in front of a camera. He doesn't look at the camera and I think this is caused because most of the time he is reading of what he wants to say. Apart from that he speaks in one tone all the time wich in due time gets quit boring. Try to sound more entheusiastic. I know he probarbly is, it just doesn't show on camera.

Very interesting course that doesn't require the learner to have any knowledge on ancient Egypt. Regardless, it is also interesting for people involved in Archaeology (especially beginners who may not have had much contact with the area yet) since it provides interesting and accessible information. The lector is easy to comprehend, very knowledgeable and shows many examples but it is obvious that he reads his speech from a screen in front of him and that makes his lectures rather stiff and less enthusiastic.

It was an interesting course, the lectures were kind of dry but the information delivered was worth sitting through them for not to mention the artifacts themselves, always moving to see them. The quizzes could have been better as some of the questions could be ambiguous or referenced material that wasn't discussed, some may have had more than one correct answer depending on which archaeologist one decided to stand with. Overall, I enjoyed it and plan on taking the next installment, Wonders of Ancient Egypt.

David Silverman presented the course in a very clear and concise way. With the limited amount of time to cover such a diverse subject it was a very good introduction. The only negative thing was the statue like manner of his presentation in front of the sphinx most of the time. It would have been nice to see other rooms in the Penn museum.

I used the course as a refresher as I have taken courses in the UK on Ancient Egypt. I would strongly recommend this as an introduction, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Excellent content and presentation. Excellent reading materials. Transcripts contain numerous errors, which is problematic when trying to discern names of people discussed if it isn't clear from the presentation. I watch each video more than once and pay attention both with and without the transcript. When I still can't figure out the word or name, I resort to Google or Wikipedia, which is not my preferred method, and it adds a lot of time to the module. But the substance is great.

This was a great course. However, the level was pretty advanced as the way the class was represented was as a conglomeration of bits and pieces of knowledge from a specific area but from a multitude of time periods and locations. I could understand the lectures well because I already had prior knowledge about many of the topics, so I recommend this course to only those who already have some conception and ideas about the field of Egyptology.

The subject is something that I find fascinating. The information delivered provided a good overview. I liked the written transcripts which helped me spell unique names of places, Pharaohs and gods.... The reason I gave this course 4 stars (vs. 5) is that the lecturer is rather monotone. While highly knowlegeable, his delivery of the material makes a fascinating subject less interesting, almost causing me to "drop" the class.

Although I enjoyed the course, I am dismayed at the number of spelling errors in the transcript for all weeks. I believe a voice recognition program was used but it seems no one reviewed the final transcript before posting. Faïence was a common mis-spelling. If I could download the entire transcript for each week (I could only find the transcript available by segment) I would be glad to note errors so they can be corrected.

Great course. I wish it demonstrated more of the Nubian culture of Egypt as well. One of the last videos, was disappointing to see a clearly black Mummy whose name was Pontious (sp) which means Black or Nubian, and the narrator made a disclaimer on it. Also, the narrator appeared as if he was frightened and reading from a script the entire time. Sort of took away from the lecture. Other than that it was a good class.

I enjoyed the way he organized his lectures and the presentation of the ideas within. I wished there were more examples of what he was talking about. With a collection of 40k items, some more examples would have been great. With that said his course was good enough to sign up for the next. Better than other courses I took on competing platforms. Coursera has better history and civ lectures.

Informative for the beginner but Dr Silverman really does have to work on his deadpan delivery as the excitement of the teacher spreads to the student. The only time he cracked a smile was when he was talking in the lab. There was little personal insight into the life of the ancient Egyptians and many points were raised with an "I will come back to that" which never seemed to materialize.

Adorei fazer esse curso e aprendi muito. No entanto, tenho algumas críticas a fazer. O curso é um pouco cansativo porque o narrador fala, masas imagens não são muito explicativas. As provas pedem detalhes que muitas vezes são totalmente desimportantes. O texto em português precisa urgentemente de uma revisão, tanto da grafia como do conteúdo. Tem horas que o texto em português atrapalha.

I found the visuals of the artifacts very fascinating. It added extra flavor to the course. However, some different prompts in the lectures may have allowed for more precise note taking. The quizzes provided some good specific questions to guage comprehension, but some of them felt like they weren't covered in the lectures or were very glossed over. Overall, I enjoyed this course.

The course was interesting and contained a lot of information. However, the quiz questions are not all answered in the lectures. Several times I had to go to outside sources to answer some questions. Please go through your quiz materials and make sure that the answers are presented clearly in the lectures. Or more easily, rewrite the quizzes to contain only lecture material.

This was a very interesting course and I learnt a great deal from it. I did feel that it could have been presented in a more dynamic and engaging way, although I recognise that the presenter is obviously an expert in this field and has a wealth of knowledge. I'm sure that if I visited the sites of Ancient Egypt again I would see them differently and in a much more informed way.

Overall great intro slash brief overview of Ancient Egypt. Felt that week 2 was a little overwhelming in that it basically just lists dynasties and dates non-stop. Also felt that the videos themselves could have been longer rather than having 10 2-5 minute videos each with an intro and credits scene. Overall well done and will be taking the second course.

The course was very enjoyable. I would like to see a video lesson the geography of Egypt as there is much mention of locations in the early lessons. There is nothing about temples or rituals or the Valley of the Kings. Perhaps this could be a 2-part course with more themes. Many of the url links I tried to look at do not work. That needs to be addressed.

I have the same opinion : "History is the study of change over time,and it covers all aspects of human society. Political, social, economic, scientific, technological,and cultural developments are all part of history"Ancient Egypt is not different.Its myths are jewels studded to make it more charming!In fact Egyptians were truly a class apart.

While most of the information is correct, it only provides the Herodotus version of the Mysteries of Osiris and sanitizes much of the things presented. It is a bit expected for an intro course, though I would have hoped for better. I would love to see an intermediate to advanced course for those of us who are hobbyists in Egyptology already.

This is my first "serious" course about Egypt.

Not only Professor Silverman was capable of impressing me with his lessons but also the suggested reading was precious, interesting and very useful for further learning.

My Chistmas present for myself will be "Ancient Egypt by David Silverman" which I MUST have.

Thank you for having me

Loved being able to take a course on a subject that I'm passionate about. I was fortunate to visit Egypt before taking this course so when I went through this course, it was a refresher to what I had learned during my trip. The professor was extremely informative but he seemed to jump around quite a bit and came off dry.