Writing History’s Mystery

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.

 

Good Neighborhoods

Nippur Neighborhoods
Elizabeth Stone

In the obscure field of cuneiform studies, there is a surprising divorce between those who study holes in the ground (archaeologists) and those who study the tablets that come out of those holes (cuneiformists). One cannot exist without the other, yet the two fields have evolved separately until now when many universities train students in one or the other. For instance, at the University of Oxford, one can get an MPhil in Cuneiform Studies without doing any serious work in the archaeology at all.

That’s what makes Elizabeth Stone’s Nippur Neighborhoods such an important work. It is not new (1987), but remains a singular example of an exemplary ambition. Stone, an archaeologist and professor at SUNY-Stonybrook, endeavors to bring the two strands of research together.

Her work examines a city, Nippur, during one period, the Old Babylonian (2000-1600 BC). The city occupies a central place in Assyriological scholarship because of the more than 30,000 cuneiform tablets that were unearthed in the 2 major expeditions to the site. The first of those expeditions, conducted by American-sponsored teams in the latter years of the 19th century, left archaeological records that are virtually useless. The second, American sponsored and begun in the years immediately after World War II, was well grounded in the stratigraphic method, and therefore the records are relatively easy to examine.

Stone does much archaeological reassessment, and makes some minor alterations to the stratigraphy of the site. She also examines many of the contracts that were found in the latter expedition and never published. The book includes a redrawing of many of the archaeological plans and copies of over 90 of the cuneiform tablets.  By putting these two types of evidence together, she has done what few Assyriologists are willing to attempt and she is to be heartily commended for the effort.

Unfortunately, the book suffers from Stone’s lack of sophistication when it comes to the cuneiform material. This is evident right from the start of the book, when she sets forth her presuppositions. One of the major ones is that Nippur was destroyed in a cataclysmic event that occurred around 1950 BC and is recorded in a cuneiform composition known as the Nippur Lament. But the Nippur Lament is properly understood as a propaganda piece legitimizing the rule of Isme-Dagan, a later king, and it’s value as a historical record is in serious doubt. The weakness of this precept, which is held as fact throughout the rest of the book, negates much of the later conclusions.

The great success of Nippur Neighborhoods is not that it made a huge advance in the field of Ancient Near Eastern research – it didn’t – it is that it exposed the cracks within the scholarly community. Those who are committed to studying cuneiform tablets (rightly) criticized the book, and as a result, there is very little work of a similar ambition. Indeed, many seem content to bypass this sort of history altogether, and instead apply modern theories of literary criticism and historical method to cuneiform material. This is a shame, because with cuneiform tablets, we have documents of many types – such as records of sales, loans, property transfers, and inheritances - that often have a specific archaeological context, virtually unheard of in other areas of ancient research.

Stone’s work is a reference to all the Assyriologists I know, though its conclusions must be taken with a grain of salt. It is thorough, readable, and definitive on many minor points. It deserves a wider reading by historians, especially Classicists, Biblicists, Egyptologists, and any other specialization in which the marriage of archaeological and documentary evidence is a rocky one.

I would be remiss if I did not include this note. This wealth of data is indeed wonderful, but surely represents only the tiniest fraction of what still remains in the ground. Unfortunately, this material is under serious threat from illegitimate excavation – looting. This looting began not long after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and continues today. Important sites, including Nippur, are being compromised such that significant scholarly excavation of them will be difficult in the future. It is sad that so few are aware of what is being lost.