This article examines what people in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Anatolia thought about and did with Hittite and Neo-Hittite rock-cut relief and inscriptions. It brings together archaeological and textual evi dence that demonstrates the intensity, variety, and sophistication o f interactions with Bronze and Iron Age material remains between the classical and early Byzantine periods. It also calls attention to the ways in which indigenous inhabitants and foreign visitors alike used such remains to construct or verify narratives about local and universal history. The evidence analyzed here should be o f interest to those studying social memory as well as cross-cultural interaction within and beyond the Mediterranean.

Abstract:This paper explores instances in Herodotus’ Histories where the historian or his characters engage with very large numbers by counting vast collections of people or things, establishing the dimensions of huge objects and measuring long stretches of time. In these episodes, Herodotus explores how quantifying the material traces of the past can help reconstruct antiquity. This methodological point is most evident in his calculations in book 2, and this paper focuses in particular on his persistent reckoning in three interrelated Egyptian accounts: those of the nature of the Nile valley, of the construction of the pyramids and of the genealogy of the Theban priests. I argue that Herodotus’ quantifying efforts, far from being only a rhetorical strategy to increase the narrator's credibility and authority, are an important, indeed crucial, part of his historical method.

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