Wonders of Ancient Egypt

Upcoming ancient Egypt courses on Coursera

There's two free courses on ancient Egypt coming up on Coursera, both taught by David Silverman at Penn. This is a great opportunity if you don't know much about Egypt and want to cover the basics!

Introduction to Ancient Egypt and Its Civilization begins November 27 and runs for 6 weeks, covering Egyptian history, kingship, gods and goddesses, pyramids, and mummification. Wonders of Ancient Egypt begins December 4 and covers Egyptian art, the basics of hieroglyphs, magic, the Amarna period, and Tutankhamun.

I have completed this course and it's companion Wonders of Ancient Egypt:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/wonders-ancient-egypt/home/welcome

The lecturer is very knowledgeable, consistent and has a long list of qualifications. The lectures are set mostly within the museum of Egyptian artifacts at the University of Pennsylvania and they use the artifacts in their collection for emphasis on the topics.

It's a great overview course for beginner's (or as a refresher) covering history/chronology, basic cosmology and deities, mummification, royalty, etc. The second course, Wonders of Ancient Egypt has a section that covers basically of reading and writing heiroglyphs as well as others about curses/magic, Atenism, etc.