Historical methodology is a contested territory in our culture today. Some would say that the connection between historical remains that we can study and the events we wish to study is too distant and problematic to produce widely accepted facts. History then is irredeemably an art. Others maintain that there is a consensus of informed opinion that has a right to a view that is influenced by new data and new arguments in ways governed by reason. So history approaches a science.
Regardless of one’s view about these theoretical problems, there is a consensus on practice to be preferred among historians, especially in the Ancient Near East. The practice consists in turning to original documents and attempting to translate them and then placing them in their original contexts. The preference for original texts is common among historians of all periods, but in the Ancient Near East it approaches a fetish (Jordanova 2000). Because the field was created in the last two centuries on the basis of the gradual decipherment of the Ancient Near Eastern languages, attention has focused on reading new texts as they become available. This is not a simple task since our knowledge of the languages is constructed on our philological efforts and is incomplete. There are always corrections and additions to be made. It is hard to make generalizations because new, possibly contradictory, texts will certainly be found. This fact warns us to avoid wide generalizations and limits the interest in any particular text, especially if the language in which the modern scholar presents it is overly modest, as it usually is.
The problem stressed in so-called postmodern theory consists in the discovery in the last century of the problem of perspective. Scholars have come to feel in many disciplines that their own backgrounds and ways of seeing affect what they look for in research as well as how they interpret what they see. For the Ancient Near East Powell in an essay on economic history may have been the first to note that this was the age where we were aware of how our perspective affects our vision (1978).
Historians have tended to view the problem of perspective as the objectivity problem, meaning that an early goal of historians in the 1800s at least was to generate knowledge that would be recognized as valid by any observer, regardless of cultural background. This view was propounded by researchers of middle class background and European culture and was not actually tested by scholars from the Middle East itself or other parts of the world. But the variety of historical questions asked by students from different backgrounds, especially after the end of most colonial occupations after World War II, has caused history theorists, who tend to be philosophers rather than practicing historians, to retreat from claims to objective knowledge. Novick analyzes the North American approach to the objectivity problem (1988). He does not pay much attention to ancient studies, but he does note that James Henry Breasted, the Chicago Egyptologist, opposed entry of the United States into World War I, but when the United States did enter, he presented a rebound German dictionary to his son with the title ‘‘Dictionary of the Enemy’s Language’’ on the spine (116). Even ancient historians are swayed by current passion, though Breasted was clearly ironic in his gift and wanted the son to study the enemy’s still useful and important language. On the other side, we may note the preface to the Assyriologist Heinrich Zimmern’s book on loanwords in Akkadian language, where it is clear that in Zimmern’s view the true values of Western culture lay on the German side (Zimmern 1917).
Modern historians acknowledge that others might see problems differently, and yet most historians do assert that the past they study is not wholly fabricated. The modes of discussion of that past may owe a great deal to the conventions our culture expects for storytellers (White 1973). In contrast Gay argued that in spite of style there remain data (1974: 198-217). Some stories did happen and have left evidence which all experts acknowledge. Historical consensuses are established and new theses are advanced, rejected, and modified on the basis of agreements of scholars on what constitutes new knowledge.
Ancient Near Eastern historians assume in general that the methods they use are completely understandable by themselves and thus accessible to any reader. This aspect of Ancient Near Eastern history appears to be a vestige of its origins in breezily self-confident pre-World War I scholarship where pronouncement was sometimes viewed as proof. In most studies scholars launch into the problems and periods they wish to examine without explaining what they themselves have done or why they did so. Among valuable exceptions is Liverani who has a notable introductory chapter on the Ancient Near East as a historical problem (1988a: 5-27). It is true that in the past issues of methods have also been ignored in other sub-fields of history, and reasonable observers may deny that there is any particular thing that may be called historical method. Jordanova, though writing quite a good book on the social contexts in which historians function and what they do, admits there is no method that historians exclusively use and that many other disciplines critically consider the past (2000). And yet, she argues, there is a habit of mind that may be cultivated which seeks to trace conditions back in time. Further, it is clear that when one steeps oneself in a period through broad and deep reading, one can become adept at understanding some of its nuances. More grandiose claims for our abilities to reconstruct the past ring hollow now; yet the researcher, especially the old and canny researcher, does learn the shape and possibilities of the times studied.
World History
