The past was constantly involved in the present, and all
that enshrined the past, monuments, inscriptions, records, were essential
weapons in government, in securing the authority, not only of the king, but
also of those whose power he symbolized and sanctified. The purpose, the maintenance of authority,
was simple, not complex, and it moulded the explanation: defeat was the scourge
due to a god’s neglect; failure to attend to a god’s wants could lead him to
turn his back on his people as the god Nidoba had done on his city of Lagash. In
such a world the defeated were always wicked and the successful righteous. The past cannot be more simply used than
this, yet its simplicity has never hurt its popularity. The same historical methods, hoary with age,
were used by Cyrus, in 539 B.C., when Babylon’s turn came. Yet primitive as this type of method may be
in handling the past, it was, in various forms, to last not only for centuries
but millennia. Annalistic history, until
very recent times, has been, with hagiography and biography, the dominant
method of dealing with the past. It is
true that the activities of the gods have been pushed further and further into
the background, but the general purpose of annals, whether they be written by
Livy, by Tacitus, by the ancient Chinese sages, or by Baker, Holinshed or
Fabyan, or Macaulay, Bancroft or Bishop Stubbs, have the same fundamental
purpose: to explain the past in order to strengthen and to serve the authority
of the ruling powers. Disasters,
setbacks, even defeats, conspiracies and rebellions, can be contemplated so
long as the result is right. But
obviously, as societies become more complex, more sophisticated in their
traditions, and more varied in their class structure, and more diverse become
the sources of social and political power, so does the problem posed to the annalist become more difficult to
solve, calling on greater powers, not so much of historical analysis as of
literary ingenuity. The differences
between the Annals and Histories of Tacitus and the Book of
Chronicles are at first sight staggering; the highly sophisticated contrasts sharply with the simple. Yet the
purpose of both is the same. As Hugh Lloyd-Jones
has reminded us, ‘All ancient history – perhaps all history – is the history
of a ruling oligarchy.’ But it is
more than this; it always contains, as indeed the Annals and Histories of
Tacitus do, a justification of the authority of the state. History as criticism of the basis of power
and authority, rather than history as criticism of the way men have used it, is
of very recent origin in the history of human society. This method of dealing with the past by
narration of events of particular peoples, nations or communities in order to
justify authority, to create confidence and secure stability, opens up a huge
complex of ideas that is far too vast to deal with here in the detail which it
deserves. And I only wish, at this
point, to emphasize one aspect of it. I
have used the example of Ancient Mesopotamia because of its simplicity,
because, like the cleaned skeleton of an animal or bird, it displays the
obvious. But every literate society
which has so far existed has needed to use the past for the same fundamental
purpose. The past has always been the
handmade of authority.[1]
[1]
J.H. Plumb, The Death of the Past.
Preface by Simon Schama. Intro by Niall Ferguson (New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2004), pp. 37-40.
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