ISAC Lecture with Dr. James Burgin, ISAC

Join new faculty member James Burgin as he discusses Emulation and Originality: Anatolian Historical Writing in its Old Babylonian Context. Emulation and Originality: Anatolian Historical Writing in its Old Babylonian Context This talk will reexamine the origins of Hittite historical writing and its relationship to Syro-Mesopotamian antecedents. Despite the ascription of shared tropes and narrative conventions, there are currently no direct models for the earliest Anatolian historical texts. This leads to questions about the source of the Anatolian tradition of historical writing, especially since the earliest Hittite texts contain more historical narration and in a more concentrated form than almost every contemporary Mesopotamian inscription, with no apparent period of experimentation. If the Anatolians adopted historical writing from Syro-Mesopotamia, they did so by extracting the pith of the genre without the generic trappings (extensive epithetic prologue, theological encomia, building reports). How this may have occurred remains a matter of speculation; it will be suggested that direct political, economic, and cultural contact, supplemented by written contact mediated by letters, rather than imported inscriptions or highly educated scribes, was the main avenues of acculturation of Anatolians to cuneiform historical narration. The similarities between the two traditions thus reflect a shared late Middle Bronze Age milieu rather than direct textual dependency. James Burgin earned his BA, MA, and PhD at the University of Chicago. Between his graduation in 2016 and return to Chicago in 2025, he worked on or lead various research projects in Germany. After an initial year in Mainz, he spent most of his postdoctoral career at the University of Würzburg, where he worked for eight years, with shorter stays at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Vienna. His academic interests have revolved around Hittite festivals, Hittite economy, and now the Hittite tradition of historical writing.