Records of the Past, Volume I

What It's About

Records of the Past is the first volume of a five-volume series presenting English translations of ancient inscriptions from Egypt and Western Asia. The texts gathered here are drawn from Assyrian and Babylonian sources, with the centrepiece being two versions of the Babylonian Creation epic, the Enuma Elish — the mythological account of how the god Marduk defeated the chaos dragon Tiamat and fashioned the world from her body. The volume also includes a selection of historical and religious texts from the ancient Near East. Sayce's aim throughout the series was to make primary source material accessible to a general educated readership at a time when Assyriology was still a young discipline and such translations were not widely available.

Key Concepts

The Enuma Elish sits at the heart of this volume, and Sayce was working at a moment of considerable scholarly excitement: the cuneiform tablets had only recently been deciphered, and the parallels between Babylonian creation mythology and the Genesis accounts were causing real controversy in Victorian intellectual life. The historical texts provide further context for ancient Near Eastern kingship and religious practice. Readers should bear in mind that Assyriological scholarship has advanced substantially since 1889, and some of Sayce's readings and interpretations have been revised or superseded.

About the Author

Archibald Henry Sayce (1845–1933) was a British Assyriologist and linguist, and one of the leading figures in the study of the ancient Near East during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He held the chair of Assyriology at Oxford and was a prominent, if sometimes controversial, voice in debates about the relationship between archaeology, biblical history, and ancient civilisations.