People Don't Change: History is Short for the Individual

During the fire, Nero didn't fiddle; he

was organized. After, yes, he blamed a 

relatively unknown group: Christians.

A fascinating problem with history is how much we humans are subject to "three score and ten" years (or "four score and ten" with current medical advances). 

That is, adulthood for many people--specifically, adulthood in which people are directly engaged with current affairs--is anywhere from fifty to seventy years. That's it. 

It is easy, when reviewing history, to think in terms of the larger picture and employ hindsight. Well, that was a mistake! Why didn't they know better?! 

In truth, as with Adrien-Joseph Colson in the French Revolution, what people actually experience can be quite different from the big picture we learn about in retrospect. 

In a specific moment, some events appear to have ended. Other events appear to be successful. But in the future...

So a Christian during the reign of Julian (the Apostate), who only lasted 2 years, could be excused for thinking, "Ah, yes, but someone like Constantine is just around the corner!" 

But back up to Nero. A Christian then (and lots of other people) could very likely believe, "This religion/empire/EVERYTHING is dying out."

In sum, mortals see some changes as inevitable while perceiving other aspects of their lives as permanent. Regarding the former, 4 years separate the beginning of the French Revolution from the Terror and there were indicators early on that it might go bad. Napoleon's ascent to power to his abdications (1814/1815) was 10 years. The Titanic crashed in under a week. A person living through these events would be much like Americans living through lockdowns. It may have seemed endless at the time. Yet it is rapidly receding in memory (even if the effects are still with us). 

On the other hand, Calvinists in New England before the Revolutionary War had good reason to believe their religion would continue and thrive into the nineteenth century--except 70 years later, Methodism had entirely taken over. A Romano-Britain in Southern England in 100 A.D./C.E. would have every reason to believe, "It will be like this forever," and in a way, for that Romano-Britain's immediate descendants, that belief was true. Rome didn't leave Britain until (officially) 410, though someone living in mid-England in, say, 380 might have had concerns. 

I can never forget that to citizens of Egypt under Ramses, the pyramids were ancient. Not ancient, as in Maine's Portland Head Light, which construction was started before the Revolutionary War and completed after it. No, the pyramids were REALLY old, as in there was as much time between Ramses the Great and the pyramids at Giza as between us and Alfred the Great's dad. 

Humans are egocentric and chronocentric, so we think that every time is always the way things are...

And in a way they can be--for us. 

But ALWAYS has never true in terms of history.  

People Don't Change: Mesopotamian Sons

Cultures change. Technology changes. Understanding changes. 

Human nature truly doesn't change.  

Professor Amanda H. Podany of Great Course's Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization describes a kingly father and his letters to his sons. His sons were sub-kings since Mesopotamian dynasties were comprised of cities. Sometimes, kings ruled over multiple cities. Sometimes, they were subject to other kings. 

What is hilarious is not just the king's desire to dole out advice--doling out advice definitely seems to be part of the human condition and quite specific to certain personality types. Podany even says that the father "tended to micro-manage his son's administrations." 

What is more hilarious is that the father-king acts like all fathers in history despite the differing context. When one of his sons wants to build more idols, the father-king points out that more idols means more religious ceremonies which require more sacrifices of oxen and sheep except "you keep telling me you don't have enough oxen and sheep!"

Translation: Where are you going to get the money? From me?  

 The father-king also complains that the son can't make his own decisions: "Is there no beard on your chin?"

And he compares his sons to each other. So the older son tells the younger, "Write to me before you write to Dad." 

Human nature is a constant.  

People Don't Change: The Proliferation of Financial Records

Ancient Egypt was hugely popular in the nineteenth century--and still is. Professor Amanda Podany in her Great Courses CD and DVD on Ancient Mesopotamia comments that people are often confused by her focus: Mesopotamia rather than Egypt, even though Ancient Mesopotamia is the older culture. 

Ancient Egypt, in all truth, is somewhat misleading about what the ancient world was like. Those pyramids! They don't just loom over the landscape, they loom in importance over the history and the lives of Ancient Egyptians. (By the time  Hatshepsut comes along, the pyramids were to the Egyptians of that time period what the medieval era is to us. To Ramses, the pyramids were ancient.) Yes, the pyramids were huge work projects, employing a great many people, and yes, they reveal beliefs about the afterlife... 

But Ancient Mesopotamia reveals what truly pushed human civilization forward from Day 1. The majority of cuneiform tablets from the area are about...

Accounts! 

I can confirm this reality. Reviewing my parents' paperwork, the largest file (just as large if not larger than the letters and journals and stored children's artwork) is...

BILLS! Account agreements. Banking forms. The file would be even larger if some of the documents hadn't be shredded.  

Archaeologists love this stuff, by the way. 1,000 years from now, archaeologists and anthropologists will try figure out our lives--how we lived, where, on what--from tax documents. Which doesn't mean the more imaginative, family-oriented, individual, belief and art-type stuff doesn't exist: imagine trying to figure out everything about United States culture or history from those ubiquitous newsprint circulars that show up in our mailboxes every weekend. Archaeologists and anthropologists could figure out quite a lot from those circulars! But what they figured out would only scratch the surface. And they wouldn't be able to guess that I throw out most of mine--I don't even use them to line the cage of my non-existent hamster. 

What survives the MOST is, itself, up for interpretation.