Grab a person off of the street and ask them what they think of when they hear the words “ancient history” and you are likely to get a variety of responses. If the person is inclined to think of the discipline of history, he or she is most likely to invoke memories of the Greeks or possibly the Romans. If the person is of a Judeo-Christian heritage, they may bring up the Israelites, or even the Egyptians. Suffice it today, that few will think to the early civilizations of Mesopotamia: the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Yet these, along with Egypt, existed earlier than any of those more common answers. And they have left us myriad records with which we can analyze their history. Beneficially, they wrote on clay, which is infinitely more durable than papyrus for example, which the Egyptians used. And it is not only preserved texts such as royal annals or histories which survive – scholars are fortunate to have many everyday household records of ‘ordinary’ people. The benefits of this treasure trove are examined in a handy little book by Marc van de Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History.

The book is not solely an examination of some obscure texts that were composed millennia before Christ. The book has a more universal aim, which is to investigate how history is written. Historians of Ancient Mesopotamia (sometimes referred to as the Ancient Near East), like the historians of every period, are subject to changing winds of fashion in how to approach their material. Too often history is presented as litanies of names and dates, wars and kings. Scholars of ancient Mesopotamia are no different; Mesopotamian history is divided into convenient periods which are given hard dates, as if the people alive woke up that day and said, “Well, it’s now 2000 BC, time for us to stop being Sumerian, now we are Old Babylonians.” This system of classification was created by the desire to characterize periods by the rulers, maintained by tradition and now is so ingrained in pedagogy that no student of ancient Mesopotamia is ignorant of it. The fallacies of such an approach have been recognized by many authors, and there has been a gradual shift within the field of Ancient Near Eastern studies to try to examine history from other angles, such as social, cultural, intellectual and economic. Much has been written and is being written in this vein.

Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History is a book that lays out, in layman’s terms, how history has been approached, and illustrates some of the new ways in which history is being approached. Ancient Mesopotamia provides the historical data herein utilized, but the book’s worth is broader than that obscure field; indeed, scholars and students from a variety of disciplines would find it helpful. For the scholar it is often helpful to see how those in another field are dealing with similar problems or how they are incorporating new finds in other fields into their subject. For the student, the book is a good introduction to the history of ancient Near Eastern Scholarship, as well as to the issues and problems currently facing the field.

Van de Mieroop is fortunate that he does study ancient Mesopotamia, there are many historical periods and areas which do not provide such a wealth of information. It is eminently possible to study “History from Below,” as van de Mieroop calls it, in the Old Babylonian period because we have so many household documents from that period. The books does not really explain how history should be studied in areas that lack that wealth of data.

Overall, the book is a short (166 pages), helpful and illuminating guide to one field’s approach to its historical conundrums. Though it is 9 years old this year, I recommend it for anyone who grapples how history should be written, studied, and evaluated. It is written in terms that the layman can access with little or no trouble, and van de Mieroop’s writing style is characterized by an easy readableness. It is well worth a couple hours of one’s time.