A migration narrative is a certain way of representing and telling the history of human migrations in a given historiographical context. Felix Wiedemann investigated the meaning and importance of such narratives in 19th –and early-20th-century ancient Near Eastern studies.

Research

How assyriologists and archaeologists described the appearance of several ethnically defined groups or “peoples” in the “Fertile Crescent”? Why did migrations advance to crucial factors of explanation in the historiography of the Near East at the turn of the 20th century? And what was the reason for presenting certain migrating peoples like the “Semites” as destructive invaders whereas others like the Sumerians appeared as founders of early civilization?