By Jessica Mitchell
Every Tuesday night from 7-9 p.m., students in RC 146 revivify a language that hasn’t been conversationally applicable for thousands of years. Egyptian Hieroglyphics, taught by Stacy Davidson, is a newly implemented continuing education course here at the college.
Being that this course is classified as continuing education, it is not worth credit and will not aid to any degree or certificate. This course is simply a personal interest and self-improvement type prospect.
“There’s a lot of people here with diverse interests and diverse learning needs and that’s the audience we serve and this is one course we wanted to try,” said Phil Wegman, program director of Skills Enhancement.
The course requires no prerequisite besides having an interest. Wegman classifies these types of courses as “enrichment learning” opportunities.
“The kind of people that take continuing education are the best learners of all because people who are in these course aren’t interested in degrees or taking tests,” Wegman said. “They aren’t interested in meeting a requirement. They are simply interested in learning.”
Davidson, instructor of the one night a week, two-hour course, is an Illinois State and University of Michigan graduate with a degree in history and Masters in Near-Eastern Studies with an Egyptology concentration. Even though newly hired here, she is no newbie to Egyptian Hieroglyphs. She has been teaching this program for nearly three years and has also been to Egypt to take part and aid in a dig.
Davidson said students may be surprised at the academic nature of the course.
“They will probably have more grammar than they expect,” she said. “It’s not just cartoon pictures, it is actual grammatical structures and there are a lot of symbols to learn—but I use interactive games and worksheets and make it as low stress as possible and there are no grades in the night program, so people can come in and just learn for their own benefit and not worry about having to take tests or write papers”.
Historians have inferred that the spoken part of the language sounded very similar to Greek. The language can actually be spoken out loud, just not conversed.
“We do not converse in ancient Egyptian as a conversational language but we can speak it out loud to each other if we are reading sentences off the board or from a passage,” Davidson said.
The majority of the course is focused on the understanding and comprehension of the hieroglyphs but by the end of the course, students may be able to speak and say a few phrases.
Davidson also connects the material to everyday life by explaining that students could even go to the Nelson Atkins and read the hieroglyphs right off the artifacts themselves.
“I am interested in history and learning other languages,” said Diana Hartzler, a student enrolled in the course. “I don’t know, it’s funny because we always watch those ancient alien shows and they always show the hieroglyphics.”
“…at the museum we did get an inner and outer coffin last year, and you know it’s got hieroglyphs all over it so it’s really interesting,” said Hartzler’s mother, Dixie Buss. Buss volunteers at the Nelson-Atkins and has visited Egypt.
The course is very interest- and personal-gain based but on top of that it is also a very rare commodity.
“I am very thrilled to be teaching hieroglyphs for a continuing education program because most people who want to learn hieroglyphs have to be enrolled in an Ivy League college, which is out of reach of most people – financially or just through the selection process of admissions,” said Davison. “…so the value of this class is you get to take it from an instructor that was taught in graduate school, who has the knowledge and who is willing to give it to the students in a low stress environment…so I actually prefer to teach for programs like this.”
To learn more about the Egyptian Hieroglyphics class please contact Stacy Davidson at sdavid22@jccc.edu and make sure to look for the spring offered course at the same day and time next semester.
Contact Jessica Mitchell, reporting correspondent, at jmitch54@jccc.edu.