Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World (eBook)

Kurt A. Raaflaub is David Herlihy University Professor, and Professor of Classics and History, emeritus at Brown University. His publications include The Discovery of Freedom (2004), Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (with Josiah Ober and Robert Wallace, 2007), The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (ed., with Johann P. Arnason, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), Geography and Ethnography: Perceptions of the World in Pre-Modern Societies (with Richard J. A. Talbert, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), and The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-Cultural Transformation and Its Interpretations (ed., with Johann P. Arnason and Peter Wager, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).

Series Editor's Preface vii

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction 1

Kurt A. Raaflaub

1 On Being Historical 6

David Carr

2 The Task and Ritual of Historical Writing in Early China
19

Stephen W. Durrant

3 History and Primordium in Ancient Indian Historical Writing:
Itiha¯sa and Pura¯nòa in the Maha¯bha¯rata
and Beyond 41

James L. Fitzgerald

4 Historical Consciousness and Historical Traditions in Early
North India 61

Romila Thapar

5 Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in Ancient Japan: The
Nihon shoki as a Text of Transition 79

Christian Oberländer

6 As the Dharmacakra Turns: Buddhist and Jain Macrohistorical
Narratives of the Past, Present, and Future 97

Jason Neelis

7 History as Festival? A Reassessment of the Use of the Past and
the Place of Historiography in Ancient Egyptian Thought 117

Thomas Schneider

8 The Presence of the Past in Early Mesopotamian Writings
144

Piotr Michalowski

9 "Two Old Tablets": Thinking, Recording, and
Writing History in Hittite Society 169

Theo van den Hout

10 Thinking and Writing about History in Teispid and Achaemenid
Persia 187

Robert Rollinger

11 Historical Texts in the Hebrew Bible? 213

Marc Zvi Brettler

12 The Many Faces of the Past in Archaic and Classical Greece
234

Jonas Grethlein

13 How the Romans Remembered, Recorded, Thought About, and Used
Their Past 256

Andreas Mehl

14 Patterns of Early Christian Thinking and Writing of History:
Paul - Mark - Acts 276

Eve-Marie Becker

15 Byzantine historia 297

Stratis Papaioannou

16 The Past in the Early and Medieval Islamic Middle East (circa
750-circa 1250) 314

Andrew Marsham

17 Sources and Scales of Classic Maya History 340

Nicholas P. Carter

18 The Poetics and Politics of Aztec History 372

Lori Boornazian Diel

19 Corn and Her Story Traveled: Reading North American Graphic
Texts in Relation to Oral Traditions 391

Lisa Brooks

Index 417

"This book meets three demands of the humanities today:
transcending the Western perspective into a universal one;
addressing the broad variety of cultures; and reflecting this new
approach conceptually. Thus it gives new answers to the old
question: what is history?"

--Jörn Rüsen, Institute for Advanced Study in
the Humanities in Essen

"In this excellent anthology, internationally renowned
experts of historical thinking and writing embed their
predecessors' ideas in their respective contexts.
Furthermore, they convincingly explain the differences between
pre-modern forms of historical thinking and the conceptual
categories we use today."

--Josef Wiesehöfer, The University of Kiel