Though there may be no distinct historical method, there definitely are lots of things that historians of the Ancient Near East do that obtain and generate ideas about the past. For Egyptology, Hornung discusses techniques mainly in terms of computer projects and institutions that support research, but he does address the use and meaning of Egyptology (1990: 16-17, 20-1). He notes that one may see many Western institutions and ideas as derived from Egyptian sources. Of special interest too is simply the long period of Egyptian isolation and development, making it an unrivaled laboratory of well-documented human endeavor. Also Egyptian thinkers dealt with questions of abiding concern, but Hornung acknowledges that attempts to derive an esoteric number-based mysticism from the pyramids and other monuments account for some of the interest in Egypt, but by no means all (1990: 16, 139). And the fight against the idea that Egypt has some secret knowledge which has been esoterically passed down to someone or other continues to this day (Hornung 2001).
Another notable scholar who did try to address the question of the modern social role at least of Assyriology, the study of the cuneiform-using languages and cultures, was Oppenheim in his essay ‘‘Assyriology - Why and How,’’ in which he nudged the discipline from a humanities outlook more toward a collaborative social scientific approach (Oppenheim 1977: 7-30). He envisioned progress being made in particular in ancient history of science and technology through the interpretation of ancient texts by Assyriologists collaborating with historians of science and technology experts (1977: 28-30). Such approaches generate new understandings, as Oppenheim’s work showed, but they are not necessarily applicable to questions about society and economy or religion and literature - questions in which Oppenheim was perhaps not so much interested. Bagnall has made a similar plea for collaborative scholarship in his area of papyrology, the study of written remains in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (1995: 116-17).
A memorable example of consciousness about models we choose for research is Sasson’s paper in which he argues that studies of ancient Israelite state-building have a great deal to do with the preoccupations of the modern researchers involved (1981). He shows that Germans in the nineteenth century were very interested in the coagulation of nations as Prussia and the rest of Germany came together around the king of Prussia, and so they regarded Israelite kingship as the primary focus of research. The pre-monarchic alliance that some of them suggested seems now to echo Germany before unification under the Kaiser. Citizens of the United States, on the other hand, tended to see nations as conglomerations of immigrants from elsewhere. They depicted the formation of Israel as a migration of motley groups from many directions who then formed a consensual confederation, out of which kings later emerged. Sasson admits there were no particularly British or French models for early Israel, though both those countries also had unique paths to national identity and had scholars who considered Israelite origins. What Sasson’s observations show is that historians may be influenced in how they see a distant past by their own countries’ histories, but also they may not be so influenced, as the British and French cases show. The lesson for practitioners is that one should be as self-aware as possible, but one might still find oneself attracted for good reasons to a received model that might parallel a more recent event and one’s own experience.
There have been some studies on the shape of publication within the field, particularly on the relation between general Ancient Near Eastern studies and Biblical studies. Sampling studies in the fields showed that there was relatively little interaction between Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical studies and that Biblical scholars tended to quote from secondary sources about the Ancient Near East instead of going back to translations of original texts. Also Ancient Near Eastern scholars in their citations relied more heavily on serials and less on monographs and commentaries, while Biblicists preferred the reverse. The citation rates for serials in Ancient Near Eastern studies actually resembled the rates in the social studies, with 40-50 percent of all references being to periodicals, while Biblical studies was typical of the humanities, relying on journals for only 20 to 30 percent of citations. Also the Ancient Near Eastern scholars ignored Biblical studies, citing them in less than 9 percent of references (Yitzhaki 1986, 1987).
What this means practically is that the conceptual autonomy of Ancient Near Eastern studies from Biblical studies that has been argued for since the 1920s has apparently been achieved (Landsberger 1976). The reason for the plea for autonomy was that, as the fields of Ancient Near Eastern history were forming and for decades after, the Ancient Near East was seen predominately as the stage for Biblical history, and Ancient Near Eastern scholars came to feel the need to assert that the Mesopotamian world of ancient Iraq was distinct and separate from Biblical concerns because some questions posed of the material did not seem to derive from the material but from Biblical issues. Today, though, this separation comes at a price for Biblicists as they look upon the world surrounding Israel as alien and difficult. It also comes at a price for Ancient Near Eastern scholars as they cut themselves off from audiences interested in Biblical matters through their emphasis on technical issues vetted in journals. Both fields have moved away from ideas that the entire geographical area might have had a unified approach to any particular problem, and the diversity of views and practices is clear in the ancient record, which is now much richer and better understood than it was in the 1920s.
This separation of disciplines seems odd since every small North American college teaches the Bible, and practically many Assyriologists make livings teaching Bible as well as the Ancient Near East. Modern researchers are drawn toward specialization in research but also at the same time toward generalization in teaching. This means that most Ancient Near Eastern scholars are called upon to teach at least some courses on Western Civilization but less often to teach courses in their own specialties. Ancient Egypt’s position in modern culture seems anomalous in the extreme. Wilson notes that the autonomy of Egyptology was being established in the first century since the decipherment of Egyptian in 1822, but perhaps at the expense of having jobs (1964: 112; Foster 2002: 45). Even on a popular cultural level there is wide interest in ancient Egypt, but most Egyptologists do not also do Biblical studies, and the number of jobs for Egyptologists is minuscule. I do not understand why popular interest does not translate into academic jobs, but it may have something to do with the lack of intellectual contact with the rest of Ancient Near Eastern, including Biblical, studies, and the isolation of Egyptology as a field. As with Mesopotamian studies, Egyptological training is long and esoteric, and the direct relevance to the humanities as a whole is not always apparent in monographic studies, although the relevance is apparent to any serious student.
Probably the most sustained and direct attack on scholarship in the Ancient Near East was Said’s Orientalism (1978), which argued that scholars of the Islamic Near East but also earlier periods were working to advance the imperialistic aims of their governments. Said argued that scholars tended to prefer earlier and, for them, more classical forms of texts to the later but more popular renditions, thus depriving more contemporary spokesmen of their voices. He associated noted Orientalists with British and French efforts to control states and events in the Middle East, and more recently scholars from the United States who, he said, advanced the cause of Israel in the region.
Criticism of Said by Orientalists has stressed his error in omitting German scholarship in any portrait of Near Eastern studies; presumably he did so because German imperialist interests were late and unsuccessful, amounting mainly to support of the Ottomans against the allies of World War I. Blanket accusations against whole fields such as Said’s do not explain the fields nor do they invalidate the efforts of generations of researchers who actually sought to let the locals speak to the present generation and to link the glorious past of the peoples of the Middle East with the history of all humanity, or at least the West. But they are a useful reminder that the area we study is fraught with modern political tension, and we must be self-conscious in examining our own motives to do particular studies but have enough courage to ask questions that may not be politically palatable to some of our contemporaries.
The literature on epistemological problems and the problem of perspective in history is vast, but it has mostly been ignored by scholars of the Ancient Near East. The reason for ignoring it is the general feeling that progress in understanding actually is being made.
World History
