Produced by Arno Peters, David Moynihan Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofing Team. ASSYRIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY A SOURCE STUDY THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI STUDIES SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES VOLUME III NUMBER 1 ASSYRIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY A Source Study By ALBERT TEN EYCK OLMSTEAD Associate Professor of Ancient History CONTENTS CHAPTER I Assyrian Historians and their Histories CHAPTER II The Beginnings of True History (Tiglath Pileser I) CHAPTER III The Development of Historical Writing (Ashur nasir apal and Shalmaneser III) CHAPTER IV Shamshi Adad and the Synchronistic History CHAPTER V Sargon and the Modern Historical Criticism CHAPTER VI Annals and Display Inscriptions (Sennacherib and Esarhaddon) CHAPTER VII Ashur bani apal and Assyrian Editing CHAPTER VIII The Babylonian Chronicle and Berossus CHAPTER I ASSYRIAN HISTORIANS AND THEIR HISTORIES To the serious student of Assyrian history, it is obvious that we cannot write that history until we have adequately discussed the sources. We must learn what these are, in other words, we must begin with a bibliography of the various documents. Then we must divide them into their various classes, for different classes of inscriptions are of varying degrees of accuracy. Finally, we must study in detail for each reign the sources, discover which of the various documents or groups of documents are the most nearly contemporaneous with the events they narrate, and on these, and on these alone, base our history of the period.