The myth of the Ancient Near East

Over the past century and a half, excavations have provided the archaeological and textual evidence necessary for the study of Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Prior to these excavations, many of these populations had been completely forgotten, not only in terms of their history and cultural traits, but also in terms of their names, languages and written sources. Their rediscovery constitutes one of the greatest achievements and developments in ancient history. This rediscovery, however, has only just begun and continues to provide new information, requiring the revision or the first writing of these long and often complex chapters of history. Admittedly, Western culture always retained a sort of mythicised memory of the Near East, based on preconceptions rather than on actual historical evidence. To a certain extent, these views continue to influence historical research today. Consequently, a brief but critical reference to this phenomenon can be a useful premise for the delineation of current historiographical trends.

One of the main sources that preserved a historical memory of the Near East through time (that is without interruption) is the Old Testament. However, this complex collection of writings, which vary both in terms of dating and type, was compiled according to the ideological intentions of its editors. Moreover, the Bible is closely linked to the development of two religions, namely, Judaism and Christianity. Both these religions initially developed in the Near East, and then managed to spread beyond their spatial and chronological boundaries.

On the one hand, this link has allowed the survival of a distant memory of the Near East, despite the general disappearance of its literature. The latter had to be rediscovered, alas only partially, through archaeological investigations. On the other hand, being a holy book (and thus a divine revelation), the Old Testament has given this memory a sense of authority and an appearance of ‘truth’. This overall impression has been accepted by Western culture without substantial revisions. Consequently, the conviction of the uniqueness of the Israelites as the ‘chosen’ people has negatively influenced the presentation of the surrounding cultures cited in the Old Testament — from the Assyrians to the Chaldeans, Canaanites, and the Philistines. These surrounding cultures were therefore seen as instrumental participants (in the hands of divine will) of the salvation story of the human race in its initial phase.

Originally, the archaeological rediscovery of the Ancient Near East was itself part of an attempt at recovering data and images of the so-called ‘historical context’ of the Old Testament. Only at a later stage, and undoubtedly as a reaction against a historical and textual analysis of the Old Testament, archaeological activities intensified in order to demonstrate its substantial accuracy. Using a famous expression of obvious ideological brutality, these activities were aimed at documenting that ‘the Bible was right’. Indeed, it has been noted that the majority of the earliest archaeological investigations pursued in the region were motivated, financed, and advertised for their (true or supposed) relevance in the exegesis of the Old Testament.

The majority of researchers involved (philologists, historians and archaeologists, to name a few) were initially spurred by common motivations. This was because they were mainly Jewish, Protestant pastors and, to a lesser degree, Catholic priests. Setting aside their intellectual integrity, these scholars were not entirely impartial in their research. Their main interest lay in the results of their investigations being able to confirm or deny the premises of their own worldview. From the nineteenth century onwards, however, a more secular approach has slowly managed to prevail, despite its occasional involvement in historically misleading controversies and debates — from the ‘Babel und Bibel’ of the nineteenth century, to the recent debates on Ebla.

The classical authors were another source guaranteeing the survival of information and images of the Near East in Western culture. These authors were representatives of a world (Ancient Greek, then Hellenistic and Roman world) that was contemporary, yet in a way in opposition to late Near Eastern cultures. From Herodotus onwards, the East began to be depicted as the polar opposite of ‘our’ West. As a result, several myths were centred on the despotism of the Near East (in opposition to Western democracy), its technological and cultural immobility (in opposition to the growing progress of the Western world), and the occult and magical nature of its wisdom (in opposition to the secular and rational sciences of the Ancient Greeks and their successors).

The shift from this anthropology by contraposition to a more historical anthropology of diversity — according to which each culture is different, including our own, the latter not being superior to the others — developed, and is still developing, along a difficult path. The latter fits within the general process of historicity and cultural relativism, characteristic of modern culture. Therefore, if this mythology of ‘the different’ as polar opposite seems to have disappeared today, it is not due to the rejection of the myth per se. It is rather due to its displacement elsewhere, perhaps in the extra-terrestrial and the futuristic, which have substituted the ‘Oriental’ and ‘Ancient’. In fact, the latter are now known well enough to preclude any utopic assumption, or their interpretation as opposites of Western culture.

With the significant increase of information on the Near East, however, new myths have replaced the old ones. I am mainly referring to the modern version of the origin myth that sees the Ancient Near East as the ‘cradle’ or the ‘dawn’ of civilisation. This view sees the Near East as the initial place that developed those technological and operational instruments, and forms of organisations typical of a ‘high culture’ which, through constant modifications and improvements, has survived to this day. It is not by chance that the Ancient Near East has become one of those privileged periods of history that constitutes the backbone of a Eurocentric world history, followed by Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, and Modern Western Europe. On the one hand, this backbone tends to give a sense of unity and progress in history. On the other hand, it inevitably causes the marginalisation of other historical phases that are left out and considered irrelevant.

This view is partly true, yet dangerous in its implications. It is undeniable that the range of phenomena which allowed the development of complex societies (the origin of the state, the city, writing, and so on) first appeared in the Near East, and that the reconstruction of the history of their transmission to our time is complex, yet possible. However, it is dangerous and misleading to imagine a monogenesis of civilisation, which instead had several starting points and different paths. Equally, one cannot underestimate the influence of the continuous and substantial changes that institutions, technologies, and ideologies underwent in their history. Historical phenomena do not have a single ‘origin’, but are always modelled upon the structure of the society in which they are found. This supposed origin, then, is only one of the rings in a chain (among the many rings in the many chains of history) that has to be reconstructed in its total length, which is neither short nor univocal. This is even more the case today, with the broadening of our knowledge of the world and the drastic changes in the systems of transmission of ideas and concepts. This forces us to put our own ethnocentric point of view aside and to take advantage of the experiences and paths previously ignored by other ethnocentric worldviews.

The Near Eastern contribution to human history is certainly not the earliest one. It is preceded by other equally fundamental prehistoric phases. Therefore, the Near East is only one of many phases, and equal to any other period of history, including those that are not part of that privileged backbone of history established by modern Western historiography. Nevertheless, the history of the Near East attracts particular attention due to its crucial place in history, as a threshold or starting point of fundamental constitutive processes characteristic of complex societies. Moreover, these myths and misconceptions characterising the traditional image of the Near East need to be reconsidered and clarified with a critical eye, rather than ignored or all too easily removed from our memory.