Archaeological expeditions give ancient history students a chance to connect with civilisations past, writes Melinda Ham.

Travelling backwards in time is no obstacle for Julien Cooper. The PhD student in Egyptology is in the middle of his degree at Macquarie University and spends much of his time deciphering ancient Egyptian texts on tombs that paint a vivid picture of life almost 1500 years before the birth of Christ.

While studying a bachelor of ancient history, Cooper travelled to Egypt for eight weeks on an archaeological dig near Luxor in the Nile Valley.

Macquarie University is the first university in Australia to have four of its own sites in Egypt and has the largest ancient-history department in the country, with 30 staff members and 150 PhD students.

"I really enjoyed myself in Egypt," Cooper says. "Of course, the culture shock was huge; like the food and religion is a lot more in the air there. It was really fascinating and exhilarating to wake up each morning to go and work in a structure that was 3000 years old."

Cooper read and photographed the inscriptions on the tombs of nobles and discovered more about how they buried their dead.

"The tomb had been reused in ... about [AD500] by Coptic Christian monks, so when the rubble was dug out, they found a whole lot of other stuff," he says. "It was fascinating."

The chair of Egyptology at Macquarie, Professor Naguib Kanawati, was responsible for securing the first Australian university dig site in Egypt, in 1980.

"All foreign universities always want to study at Luxor or Cairo, so I applied for a site at Akhmim in upper Egypt, where nobody wanted to go," Kanawati says.

In 15 years, Macquarie students and academics discovered 884 tombs there and wrote 12 books detailing their finds.

"We proved to the Egyptian Department of Antiquities that we were serious and now they'll let us have the moon," he says.

Macquarie University's fieldwork continues at four sites. Kanawati says this is what makes its program unique.

"At most universities, students have to finish their doctorate before they even get a chance to go on a dig," he says. "At Macquarie, we believe there is nothing like early stimulation to really encourage students enormously and awaken their interest."

As well as excavation skills, ancient-history students learn about the culture and language of the civilisation they are studying. Students can also choose from ancient Greek, classical Hebrew or Latin and work in Italy, Israel, Turkey and Greece.