1. Pre-classical Times. We may look around for the
past, but it is nowhere to be seen. Only after immensely
long periods, and under the pressure of strange com-
pulsions, did it come to be realized that a past once
forgotten could be recovered to a considerable degree
by research.
Men may remember the things that have happened
within their own experience, and they have tended to
treasure what we call the “tales of a grandfather.”
These latter have often been regional in character, and
in England and elsewhere have been turned into local
ballads even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Handed down within a tribe from generation to gener-
ation they would be rapidly altered in ancient days
through the very processes of oral transmission—the
accretion of legendary matter, for example. Some of
them—perhaps after being captured into a great theme
by a mastermind—would be organized into the epic,
which might be associated with a combination of tribes.
For the people concerned, the epic, which might
achieve great artistry and would be transmitted
through professional storytellers, represented their
actual history—sometimes the only history they knew
beyond the time of their grandfathers. But, on internal
analysis alone—that is to say, in the absence of inde-
pendent evidence—the modern student cannot disen-
tangle the historical truth from the element of fiction.
In some ways the epic seems to have assisted the
transition to what we regard as “genuine” history,
stimulating an interest in the past and providing a
narrative technique. Occasionally it may have been so
satisfying that it checked the desire for anything better.
There was a period when in Egypt it seems to have
had even a damaging effect on the style of the
campaign-annals.
The earliest historical writing of a more authentic
kind is nearer to earth, and the impulse both to enquiry
and to the production of a record seems to arise out
of some necessity. It is possible that owing to the
character and the needs of society men had an urgent
concern to secure accurate genealogies before they
became interested in historical enquiry, or aware of
its possibilities. Perhaps the earliest and simplest form
of a more authenticated kind of history consists of
dynastic lists, which come to be strung together—some
of them strung in succession, when in reality the fami-
lies ruled simultaneously. In the tremendous list from
ancient Sumer, one or two of the kings are identified
by a brief note referring to an episode in an epic, and
it does not appear that a name was identified except
where it was one that had occurred in an epic. In
another list from ancient Egypt, “events” are included
in the case of a number of monarchs, but though,
towards the end, their number reaches a dozen or more
in the year, they are copied from the monarch's annual
reports which seem to be announcements of duties
done—many of them ceremonial obligations, but in-
cluding an annual measurement of the flooding of the
Nile. In early times, the years were not numbered, but
in the first Babylonian empire they would be named
after some event, and official lists of them had to be
kept, so that the dates on business documents, etc.,
could be identified. The result was a lengthy list, with
one event for each year; but, here again, the events
were sometimes ceremonial—not the ones that an
historian would have chosen. It has been conjectured
that these “date-lists” are the things that led to the
idea of the “chronicle.”
Some of the earliest pieces of narration that survive
are on ancient Mesopotamian boundary stones, where
the story is told as a way of establishing the rights of
the case and rehearsing the precedents. Some descrip-
tive pieces from the same region—with vivid accounts
of the sacking of cities—turn out to have been prayers
or songs of lamentation. Again, in ancient Mesopo-
tamia, one monarch who had carried out a reform
provided a splendid description of the state of things
which had existed before he had taken action. And
here, after Babylon had first established an empire,
there appeared the first interpretation of history, based
on the very ancient view that disaster fell on any state
which neglected its gods. A Hittite monarch, explaining
a policy-decision, provided a retrospective survey that
ran through a number of reigns; and Hittite treaties
are remarkable for the very considerable account they
give of the origin of wars. From a much older date—
and for a long period—in ancient Egypt a distinguished
man who needed food and libations to secure his hap-
piness after death, would on his monument implore
the passerby to take pity on him; and, in order to
support his case, he would present an account of his
life—not so much a series of events, but a list of honors
enjoyed, a proof that he had been esteemed by the
pharaoh while he actually lived. In all these cases, the
recording of events in connected with something that
one might almost call a “utilitarian” purpose. In
Mesopotamia men asked interesting questions about
the early history of the human race and seem to have
seen that things might be explained by a study of
origins. But in this connection they produced, rather,
myths, which appeared in epic form.
For over a thousand years there existed what has
always been recognized as an historical literature of
remarkable extent and importance. It consisted of the
annals produced for the rulers of great empires—the
Egyptian, the Hittite, the Assyrian, in particular
—beginning in almost the form of notes, but devel-
oping into long and pretentious narratives, disappear-
ing whenever the empire declined. These were
engraved on the walls of palaces and temples, each
monarch recording now his building feats, now his
prowess in the hunt, but chiefly his military successes.
The ruler's purpose may have been to overawe his
subjects or impress his neighbors or secure his future
fame, but he may have been reporting to a god on
the carrying out of a commission (since warfare was
conducted on behalf of a god) or he may have been
expressing his thanksgiving on the walls of a commem-
orative temple. The disproportionate space often
occupied by the itemization of the booty (of which
the temple had a great share) suggests a religious origin
on many occasions; and it has even been conjectured
that the Assyrian annals may have developed from
letters in which a monarch reported to the god on his
execution of his commission. But the curses on anybody
who should ever tamper with the monument, show
that, though these writings give no sign of any interest
in the past, the rulers concerned had great solicitude
for their future fame. All this represented history of
the type of the commemorative monument, and though
it was produced over so long a period, it could not
develop beyond a certain point, and came to a dead
end. Its most remarkable feature was the literary
elaboration that it received. The Hittite annals would
seem to have been the most distinguished, whether as
history or as historical explanation; and, though deeply
religious, coming close in this respect to the ancient
Hebrews, they bring us surprisingly near to ancient
Greece as well. The handsome and impressive reliefs
from ancient Assyria provide excellent examples of
illustrated history.
Before the Assyrian annals had reached their peak,
however, the ancient Hebrews had come on to the
stage of history. They had been semi-nomads, yearning
for settlement in cultivated territory, and expecting
from their god that he would provide them with
it—almost testing his authenticity by his ability to keep
his promise. Perhaps because the fulfillment of the
promise was so long-delayed, they made a great deal
of it when it actually came, connecting it with an
exodus from slavery in Egypt which could only have
been experienced by a section of the combined tribes.
Henceforward, the gratitude for release from Egypt
and for the entry into the Promised Land became the
tradition of the whole people and stood as the ground
for religious obedience, the reason for submission to
the divine commandments. The Children of Israel
worshipped the God who had brought them up out
of the land of Egypt more than the God who had
created the world. They were able to make a great
contribution to religion, partly because they had their
eye on the God of History rather than on the gods
of nature, and this had important ethical consequences.
Even when they became cultivators of the soil they
did not transfer their allegiance to the gods of fertility;
and even when they borrowed from their neighbors
ceremonies based on the cycle of the seasons, they
transformed these (as they transformed circumcision
itself) into the celebration of an historical event. Their
religious ideas, covenant, judgment, the Promise, the
Messiah, are connected with history. If they took over
from their neighbors in Western Asia the idea that a
national disaster is a punishment for neglect of the god
or gods, they added the notion of history as charac-
terized by the continuing Promise—a conditional
Promise, subject to terrible acts of judgment, but re-
newed after the judgment had been suffered, and even
developing, so that it became something higher every
time.
No country—not even England with its Magna
Carta—has ever been so obsessed with history, and it
is not strange that the ancient Hebrews showed pow-
erful narrative gifts, and were the first to produce
anything like a national history—the first to sketch out
the history of mankind from the time of the Creation.
They reached high quality in the construction of sheer
narrative, especially in the recording of fairly recent
events, as in the case of the death of David and the
succession to his throne. After the Exile they concen-
trated more on the Law than on history, and they
turned their attention to speculation about the future
and in particular about the end of the mundane order.
In a sense they lost touch with the hard earth. But
they did not quickly lose their gift for historical narrat-
ing, as is seen in I Maccabees before the Christian era
and the writings of Josephus in the first century A.D.
