ABSTRACT
In order to make the past present, historians today looking back at societies of the past attempt to tell a story that their audiences will find interesting and believable. Their work is a creative act, taking observable data and placing them in a context that seems logical to the writer and the reader. Historians are thus at the mercy of two elements they cannot control: the presence of data and the logic of the present. Both critically inform the work that can be done: without data there is no history to write, without a logical context any data, however plentiful, cannot be understood. In both areas historical research constantly develops: the search for data has become ever more wide-ranging, refined, and integrating evidence that was previously ignored. On the one hand, there is no real limit to what could be uncovered as historical data on any period of time. New archives or historical writings might always be found, even for the best-documented moments in history. On the other hand, historians are using new types of information that can yield new insights, such as weather patterns or oral traditions. The contextual frameworks used by historians enable different analyses of primary sources, making their interpretation comprehensible to the contemporary audience. They are often inspired by developments in other intellectual disciplines, such as anthropology, economics, literary criticism, and philo sophy, and reflect the concerns and intellectual trends of the period in which the historian works. The writing of Mesopotamian history in these fundamental respects is no different from writing histories of other periods or places.
