Thinking, Recording, and Writing History in the Ancient World presents a cross-cultural comparison of the ways in which ancient civilizations thought about the past and recorded their own histories.
* Written by an international group of scholars working in many disciplines
* Truly cross-cultural, covering historical thinking and writing in ancient or early cultures across in East, South, and West Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Americas
* Includes historiography shaped by religious perspectives, including Judaism, early Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism
Table of Content
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
About the author
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).
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