Note 37 — II. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

It would be simple enough if we could equate the beginning of history with the introduction of writing, as is often done. The equation holds good for Egypt where the oldest inscriptions refer to the first identifiable events and personalities and thus, as records of battles and royal names, form the earliest raw material of Egyptian history. But in Mesopotamia this is not so; there civilization took shape, and writing appeared, well before historical documents in the narrow sense came into being. We shall see that this difference between Egypt and Mesopotamia was due to the different purposes which writing and art were made to serve; but it illustrates that generalizations about history and prehistory are hazardous even within a limited field.