Humanities 110 Final Examination

Monday, December 16, 2024, 9:00 a.m – 12:00 p.m.

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This exam is scheduled for three hours. You can divide your time for the exam as you wish. We recommend that you limit your time on Part One to 1 hour and then take roughly 1 hour each for each essay in Part Two and Part Three (3 hours total). Make sure to use some of this time for editing and to divide your time evenly within each section. This is an open-book, open-note exam. While you may consult the assigned course materials, lectures, your notes, and handouts, you may not consult other online materials or other people for the duration of the exam. For this exam, as for all other exams at Reed, the Honor Principle applies. Failure to adhere to the requirements set out above will constitute academic misconduct.

Note: students MAY email their responses to the conference leader unless their conference leader has told them NOT to do so. Students who have accommodations from DAR are encouraged to use them for the exam. If your accommodation includes extra time, you may find it helpful to remind your conference leader of this if you have not done so already.

Part One (approximately one hour; make sure to use some of this time for editing)

Do a close reading of one passage or object from each of the three categories. Be sure to identify the key themes in the passage and explain why they are important to the work itself and/or to the larger themes in the course this semester.

1.1. Literary Passages [pick one of the two options]

  1. “The Tale of Sinuhe” (page 40)

    “‘Your burial is no small matter;
    you will not be laid to rest by barbarians.
    Act against yourself, act against yourself no more!
    You did not speak when your name was announced –
    are you afraid of punishment?’
    I answered this with the answer of a frightened man:
    ‘What does my lord say to me, that I can answer?
    For this is no disrespect towards God, but is a terror
    which is in my body like that which created the fated flight.
    Look, I am in front of you, and life is yours;
    may your Majesty do as he desires!’”

  2. Archilochus, Fragment 5

    My shield’s in the hands of some jubilant Thracian–a faultless
       piece of equipment which I left, unwillingly, beside a bush.
    Myself, I’m safe. What do I care about that shield? 
      To hell with it! I’ll soon find another one that’s no worse.

1.2. Works of Art [pick one of the two options]

  1. White-ground Lekythos, ca. 460 BCE

  2. Bisitun Monument, 521-519 BCE

1.3. Passages from Historical or Philosophical Works [pick one of the two options]

  1. Genesis 11.4-6

    “And they said, ‘Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world.’ The LORD came down to look at the city and tower that man had built, and the LORD said, ‘If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach.’”

  2. Demosthenes, “Against Neaera” (section 50 page 170)

    “You see, Stephanus gave Neaera’s daughter, the one she brought with her to Athens as a little girl, who was then called Strybele but is now called Phano, in marriage to an Athenian, Phrastor of the deme Aegilla, together with a dowry of thirty minas–making her out to be his own daughter. But when the girl went to Phrastor, a conscientious workman, one who had assembled his wealth by living carefully, she didn’t know how to fit in with his way of doing things; instead, she tried to follow her mother’s character, including her wildness. I guess that was how she was brought up.”

Part Two (approximately 1 hour; make sure to use some of this time for editing)

Write an essay on one of the following two questions. Be sure that your essay makes an argument and draws on specific examples to support your argument.

  1. Compare and contrast the models of leadership represented in three of the following texts/artifacts. Choose one from each group.
    1. The Epic of Gilgamesh, Cyrus Cylinder, Apadana reliefs
    2. “The Eloquent Peasant”, the Narmer Palette, Exodus
    3. Iliad, Oresteia, Lysistrata, History of the Peloponnesian War
  2. What role do grief, mourning, and/or commemoration play in three of the following texts/artifacts? Choose one from each group.  
    1. The Epic of Gilgamesh, “The Tale of Sinuhe”, Exodus, Esther 
    2. History of the Peloponnesian War, The Histories, the Parthenon
    3. Iliad, Oresteia, Kroisos

Part Three (approximately 1 hour; make sure to use some of this time for editing)

Write an essay on one of the following two questions. Be sure that your essay makes an argument and draws on specific examples to support your argument.

  1. How is Plato’s Republic an answer to the crisis of democracy described by Thucydides in The History of the Peloponnesian War? You might focus on the education program in Books 2 and 3 or on the Allegory of the Cave in Book 7.
  2. In the “Apology,” what are the salient points of Socrates’s defense in response to the charges of impiety and corruption of the youth? To what extent is his refusal to avoid the death penalty (in the “Apology” and in “Crito”) consistent with his defense?

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