HISTORIOGRAPHY I
NOTES ON THE BOOK
Chapter 1 – The earliest forms of historical writing
The Ancient Near East
The evidence is fragmentary, deriving from inscriptions on steles, stone tables or rocks, and writings
on papyrus; a majority of these objects have not survived entirely intact. Terms like ‘history’ and
‘historiography’ are scarce in any language of the region, though words like tôledôt (‘genealogies’)
and divre hayyamîm (‘words of those days’) might be considered approximate equivalents.
There was a sense of the past in ancient Egypt, they tried to memorialize:
Successive dynasties
Kings lists
Annals of war
Hittites were probably the first to use history for political purposes:
Justifying a particular situation
Using episodes to advice/admonish
Different types of history documents:
Epics
o Martial deeds and adventures; legendary (people believed in the moral principles
they embodied)
‘Chronographic’ documents
o Ascribe particular events to a specific date within a sequence
Includes sub-genres like kings lists, annals, chronicles
o Attempts to present the then-past in a particular light
Chronicles
o Written in third person
Astronomical diaries
o Established a precise chronological order to record events
Historiographic documents
o King lists that appears to have been compiled from other documents
Required what we would now call ‘research’
Annals
o Composed in the first person
o Recount history of particular campaigns
In Mesopotamia was the first evidence of deliberate human intention to write about the past (kings
lists and annals) and institutions for preserving their own records (library/archive). Many had
previously been preserved orally.
Since there is little evidence of a continuous tradition of record-keeping or chronicle-writing (wherein
one author adds to existing literature), many works must have been the result of what we now call
‘research’; examination of earlier, non-narrative sources.
The Babylonian Weidner Chronicle is one of the first historical works clearly designed to
recover and preserve the past explicitly for the edification of present and future.
,Jewish Historical Thought from the Tanakh to Josephus
Ancient Israelites also didn’t have a term for ‘history’ or ‘myth’, and didn’t have a strong distinction
between the two. Some viewed the Hebrews as the inventors of history, as a cumulative flow of
events towards a divinely ordained conclusion. The monotheistic religion made for a linear direction
to time that differs sharply from the cyclical vision evident elsewhere. In Greek/Roman writings, one
can find both linear and cyclical senses of time. However, there still is a cyclical vision in Hebrew
writings; alternating divine pleasure and displeasure with the chosen people, leading the world to the
repeated experience of slavery and liberation. Also, it couldn’t have been the case that a distinctive
Israelite/Jewish sense of history could have emerged in isolation (given the early contacts).
Recent scholarship has challenged the historicity of much of the Tanakh, without discarding
the idea that one can find historiography within in, although a historiography never intended to
capture literal truth, as opposed to a moral/religious truth deemed more important.
Josephus gave us the closest thing to a history in the classical sense:
Historian from one culture writing in the milieu and style of another
Wrote about the social, legal, and religious customs of the Jews
Wrote about conflicts between Jews and their enemies
Criticized Greek predecessors by defending the greater antiquity of Jewish tradition
Early Greek Historiography
The word ‘history’ itself is of Greek origin, first used in connection with the study of the past by
Herodotus. It is with the Greeks that Europe began routinely to associate histories with named
authors. The Greeks were the first to experiment with different historical forms, and managed to
transcend the confining structure of annals and chronicles without abandoning chronological writing.
We have moved into the realm of human actions, punctuated by divine involvement and influenced
by ‘fortune’.
The oldest prose historical writers are known as ‘logographers’, whose works were a
combination of the mythical and historical, drawing on epics and annals. Greeks explored several
genres of writing:
Genealogy/Mythography
Ethnography
o Study of particular foreign lands and their people’s customs
Contemporary history/history ‘proper’ or a continuous narrative of sequential events with
their causal connections
Chronography
o System of time-reckoning, principally according to years of officials
Horography
o Year-by-year history of a particular city
Herodotus and Thucydides
Herodotus was the first to use the word ‘historia’ in connection with the past, but unintentionally. He
referred to something like ‘inquiries/discoveries’, without specific reference to past or present. With
Herodotus we have the first example of a self-identifying historian. He paid attention to ethnographic
issues. He travelled widely, spoke to witnesses, and set down the truth as he believed it (therefore
his assertions were not always trusted). He built much of his Histories on the foundation of oral
tradition, rather than written authority.
His successor Thucydides accused Herodotus for history ‘attractive at truth’s expense’. He
relied on the spoken much more than the written word, but different than Herodotus did. He relied
on written sources only where he could not find a living witness.
There are some practices characteristic of Herodotus, that Thucydides avoided, he:
, Was reluctant to look far back for the causes of events
Implied that only those who were ‘insiders’ to events could accurately recount the events
privileged knowledge displaced an inferior form of hearsay
Tended to present a picture of confidence that obscures the ambiguities of evidence
Stated very clearly the target audience for his work
Claimed his history a benefit and not merely an amusement for subsequent ages
Thucydides claimed strict accuracy and truthfulness this was challenged by Dionysius.
Thucydides virtually repudiated any past that was not contemporary.
Many preferred the more broad-based, inclusive accounts in Herodotus to the narrowly political
account in Thucydides. Thucydides included speeches that he did not personally hear, and that his
memory of those he did hear was imperfect. “Speeches, so to speak, sum up events and hold the
history together”. Everybody used speeches, so Thucydides shouldn’t be criticized for this.
Greek Historiography from the Fourth to the Second Centuries
Historical writers reoriented their attention towards individuals and their achievements, and made
more direct authorial commentary on their characters. Historians were now reporters and ‘judges’
of the past (mis)deeds.
Polybius:
Focused on identifying the causes of events and emphasized practical lessons of the past.
Wrote ‘pragmatic history’
Framed the convention that the ideal historian would be a man of experience.
Provided readers with explicit statements on methodology, and criticized his predecessors.
Paid great attention to ‘primary’ sources (archives/inscriptions)
Influenced the course of political thought
Recounted a cumulative process leading to a particular destiny (the hegemony of the Roman
republic)
His account was comparative and interconnected
o Connections between different states (Sicily, Greece, Africa, Asia, Egypt)
Stressed the process of history towards the single goal of Roman supremacy
o “the Whig interpretation of history”
Roman Historical Writing from Republic to Empire
The survival rate among known texts of Roman historians has been the same than that of the Greeks;
scant fragments. Historiography started slowly in Rome (in Greece it followed epic). Two major
groups of history writing survived from early Rome:
1. Records maintained by a civic and religious official (pontifex maximus) and annually
transferred to bronze inscriptions in the Forum
Annales maximi
o Sequence of annually appointed major officials
o Funeral orations
o Public inscriptions
o Family records
o Accounts by magistrates of their periods in office
2. Roman writers who may have written continuous prose and composed their works in Greek
o Earlier Greek writers
o Annales maximi
o Oral tradition
o Magistrate lists
o Chronicles
NOTES ON THE BOOK
Chapter 1 – The earliest forms of historical writing
The Ancient Near East
The evidence is fragmentary, deriving from inscriptions on steles, stone tables or rocks, and writings
on papyrus; a majority of these objects have not survived entirely intact. Terms like ‘history’ and
‘historiography’ are scarce in any language of the region, though words like tôledôt (‘genealogies’)
and divre hayyamîm (‘words of those days’) might be considered approximate equivalents.
There was a sense of the past in ancient Egypt, they tried to memorialize:
Successive dynasties
Kings lists
Annals of war
Hittites were probably the first to use history for political purposes:
Justifying a particular situation
Using episodes to advice/admonish
Different types of history documents:
Epics
o Martial deeds and adventures; legendary (people believed in the moral principles
they embodied)
‘Chronographic’ documents
o Ascribe particular events to a specific date within a sequence
Includes sub-genres like kings lists, annals, chronicles
o Attempts to present the then-past in a particular light
Chronicles
o Written in third person
Astronomical diaries
o Established a precise chronological order to record events
Historiographic documents
o King lists that appears to have been compiled from other documents
Required what we would now call ‘research’
Annals
o Composed in the first person
o Recount history of particular campaigns
In Mesopotamia was the first evidence of deliberate human intention to write about the past (kings
lists and annals) and institutions for preserving their own records (library/archive). Many had
previously been preserved orally.
Since there is little evidence of a continuous tradition of record-keeping or chronicle-writing (wherein
one author adds to existing literature), many works must have been the result of what we now call
‘research’; examination of earlier, non-narrative sources.
The Babylonian Weidner Chronicle is one of the first historical works clearly designed to
recover and preserve the past explicitly for the edification of present and future.
,Jewish Historical Thought from the Tanakh to Josephus
Ancient Israelites also didn’t have a term for ‘history’ or ‘myth’, and didn’t have a strong distinction
between the two. Some viewed the Hebrews as the inventors of history, as a cumulative flow of
events towards a divinely ordained conclusion. The monotheistic religion made for a linear direction
to time that differs sharply from the cyclical vision evident elsewhere. In Greek/Roman writings, one
can find both linear and cyclical senses of time. However, there still is a cyclical vision in Hebrew
writings; alternating divine pleasure and displeasure with the chosen people, leading the world to the
repeated experience of slavery and liberation. Also, it couldn’t have been the case that a distinctive
Israelite/Jewish sense of history could have emerged in isolation (given the early contacts).
Recent scholarship has challenged the historicity of much of the Tanakh, without discarding
the idea that one can find historiography within in, although a historiography never intended to
capture literal truth, as opposed to a moral/religious truth deemed more important.
Josephus gave us the closest thing to a history in the classical sense:
Historian from one culture writing in the milieu and style of another
Wrote about the social, legal, and religious customs of the Jews
Wrote about conflicts between Jews and their enemies
Criticized Greek predecessors by defending the greater antiquity of Jewish tradition
Early Greek Historiography
The word ‘history’ itself is of Greek origin, first used in connection with the study of the past by
Herodotus. It is with the Greeks that Europe began routinely to associate histories with named
authors. The Greeks were the first to experiment with different historical forms, and managed to
transcend the confining structure of annals and chronicles without abandoning chronological writing.
We have moved into the realm of human actions, punctuated by divine involvement and influenced
by ‘fortune’.
The oldest prose historical writers are known as ‘logographers’, whose works were a
combination of the mythical and historical, drawing on epics and annals. Greeks explored several
genres of writing:
Genealogy/Mythography
Ethnography
o Study of particular foreign lands and their people’s customs
Contemporary history/history ‘proper’ or a continuous narrative of sequential events with
their causal connections
Chronography
o System of time-reckoning, principally according to years of officials
Horography
o Year-by-year history of a particular city
Herodotus and Thucydides
Herodotus was the first to use the word ‘historia’ in connection with the past, but unintentionally. He
referred to something like ‘inquiries/discoveries’, without specific reference to past or present. With
Herodotus we have the first example of a self-identifying historian. He paid attention to ethnographic
issues. He travelled widely, spoke to witnesses, and set down the truth as he believed it (therefore
his assertions were not always trusted). He built much of his Histories on the foundation of oral
tradition, rather than written authority.
His successor Thucydides accused Herodotus for history ‘attractive at truth’s expense’. He
relied on the spoken much more than the written word, but different than Herodotus did. He relied
on written sources only where he could not find a living witness.
There are some practices characteristic of Herodotus, that Thucydides avoided, he:
, Was reluctant to look far back for the causes of events
Implied that only those who were ‘insiders’ to events could accurately recount the events
privileged knowledge displaced an inferior form of hearsay
Tended to present a picture of confidence that obscures the ambiguities of evidence
Stated very clearly the target audience for his work
Claimed his history a benefit and not merely an amusement for subsequent ages
Thucydides claimed strict accuracy and truthfulness this was challenged by Dionysius.
Thucydides virtually repudiated any past that was not contemporary.
Many preferred the more broad-based, inclusive accounts in Herodotus to the narrowly political
account in Thucydides. Thucydides included speeches that he did not personally hear, and that his
memory of those he did hear was imperfect. “Speeches, so to speak, sum up events and hold the
history together”. Everybody used speeches, so Thucydides shouldn’t be criticized for this.
Greek Historiography from the Fourth to the Second Centuries
Historical writers reoriented their attention towards individuals and their achievements, and made
more direct authorial commentary on their characters. Historians were now reporters and ‘judges’
of the past (mis)deeds.
Polybius:
Focused on identifying the causes of events and emphasized practical lessons of the past.
Wrote ‘pragmatic history’
Framed the convention that the ideal historian would be a man of experience.
Provided readers with explicit statements on methodology, and criticized his predecessors.
Paid great attention to ‘primary’ sources (archives/inscriptions)
Influenced the course of political thought
Recounted a cumulative process leading to a particular destiny (the hegemony of the Roman
republic)
His account was comparative and interconnected
o Connections between different states (Sicily, Greece, Africa, Asia, Egypt)
Stressed the process of history towards the single goal of Roman supremacy
o “the Whig interpretation of history”
Roman Historical Writing from Republic to Empire
The survival rate among known texts of Roman historians has been the same than that of the Greeks;
scant fragments. Historiography started slowly in Rome (in Greece it followed epic). Two major
groups of history writing survived from early Rome:
1. Records maintained by a civic and religious official (pontifex maximus) and annually
transferred to bronze inscriptions in the Forum
Annales maximi
o Sequence of annually appointed major officials
o Funeral orations
o Public inscriptions
o Family records
o Accounts by magistrates of their periods in office
2. Roman writers who may have written continuous prose and composed their works in Greek
o Earlier Greek writers
o Annales maximi
o Oral tradition
o Magistrate lists
o Chronicles
