title: Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination
author:  Jan Assmann 
description: "Jan Assmann's work on cultural memory is essential for notions of memory and memorialization. I know of no modern scholarly study on collective memory and aspects relating to it, from Thucydides to modern Israel, from Genesis to modern Germany, that has not in some form drawn on Jan Assmann's theories on the relation between collective and cultural memory. In short, this book is an absolute classic, and will be invaluable to English-speaking scholars." - Susanna Elm, University of California at Berkeley<br /><br />"More than canonical since its original publication in Germany, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization is one of the most important works of cultural analysis of the past two decades. Spanning cultural and media studies, sociology, ancient history, and numerous other fields, it has already underwritten volumes of research and theory in Europe. Its translation was long awaited, and will surely transform discourse in Anglophone scholarship as well. It is a genuine tour-de-force." - Jeffrey Olick, University of Virginia
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  Excerpt from Darius' History of Rhomatum
  
  
  Reconsidered, by Berul dunSegri, written and published in the year 284 after
  the Founding and found in the private library of Nikaenor Rhomandi dunMheric,
  18th
  
  
  Princeps of Rhomatum.
  
  
  . . . It is frankly naive to accept any written history as absolute fact, as
  all events are filtered at least once through the eyes of the participants and
  again through the eyes of the recorder. Even if the recorder and participant
  are one and the same, written history remains a record twice removed from
  fact, as one must always interpret one's experiences in retrospect, and one is
  never quite the same before or after the interpretation, much less the events
  themselves.
  
  
  With regard to the history of Rhomatum, this limitation is particularly
  evident in the decades surrounding the Foundation. We have a paucity of
  documentary evidence regarding thepresumablydecades of events and thoughts
  that led to the Darian Exodus from the ancient city o