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So do I, even though one should be conscious that the early "editors" certainly did a lot of reworking of the original work. I am curious why mention the ShiJi here, in my understanding, none of the Shiji chronologies extend past 841BC (at which point the long and short datation coincide...), and I had the impression that the years of the early western Zhou kings (in chapter 4) are not recorded precisely enough to produce such a date. Do you have information on how this date was derived from the Shiji?
Shi Ji does give the
reigning years for the western Zhou kings, you can check the chapter on the house of Zhou. These years does not match with the bamboo annals.
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First, note that mythical does not necessarily mean invented. As for the Bible, I think there is a fictional element in it, some characters, like Adam and Eve, or Noah, were made up, others, like Moses, probably existed (in the sense that they refer to an original leader of the Hebrews who existed in history), but their story was embelished later, and therefore became "myth", in order to better pass the message.
I was reading Herodotus's account of ancient Egypt recently and wrote an essay on how history could have been distorted. Egypt is an interesting area to study because of the great amount of archeology that is present to correct historical errors.
Herodotus’s account is based both on what he saw personally, as well as on the information he received from interviewing the priests, who were the custodian of knowledge at the time he visited Egypt in the 5th century B.C.
Herodotus, been a Greek, with democratic traditions, was probably opposed to forced labor. Therefore, the story of Khufu satisfied Herodotus' sense of purpose. When he was told scandalous stories about the king who built the biggest pyramid, he was probably all too pleased to accept them in his idealistic view of a world with a meaning in everything. Herodotus mentioned in his book that “till the reign of King Rhampsinitus, what the priests had to tell of was of nothing but the rule of good laws and the great prosperity of Egypt; but, after him, Cheops became king over them, and he drove them into the extremity of misery.” But what Herodotus didn’t know was that Khufu only built a combined estimated mass of 2,700,000 cubic meters for his pyramids, causeway, and temples, which was actually less than the total volume that his father Sneferu constructed. King Rhampsinitus in Herodotus’s record is completely legendary, which creates further doubt to the accuracy of depicting Khufu as a tyrant. Furthermore, the only known figure of Khufu is a tiny figurine of around 7.6 cm high that’s found at Abydos. That’s significantly less than the monumental statues of later pharaohs such as Khafre, who probably built the Sphinx. The lack of extravagance for his images questions the notion that Khufu is truly a despot.
Herodotus also told a story about the wickedness of Khufu. According to him, when Khufu needed money for his pyramids, “he sent his own daughter to take her place in a brothel, instructing her to charge a certain sum-the amount they did not mention. The girl did what her father told her, but she also got the idea of leaving some memorial of her own; and so she asked each man that came at her to make her a present of one stone in the works, and from these stones, they say, a pyramid was built midmost of the three, in front of the great pyramid.” There is no evidence for that story at all. Mark Lehner has identified the three Queen’s pyramids of GI-a, GI-b and Gi-c. According to Lehner, GI-a probably belongs to Hetepheres, who was the mother of Khufu. Lehner also thinks that GI-b belonged to Meritetes, one of the major wives of Khufu, based on an inscription found in the chapel of the first mastaba to the east. GI-c belongs to Queen Henutsen, the third wife of Khufu and mother of his successor Khafre. None of them belonged to a daughter of Khufu, much less the scandalous story of Khufu making a prostitute out of his daughter. Herodotus probably thought this story had a purpose to his idealism as well. In his mind, the man who was despotic enough to enslave hundreds of thousands of men for building his tomb must have been immoral enough to oppress his own daughter.
Furthermore, Herodotus’s mention that “The people worked in gangs of one hundred thousand for each period of three months. The people were afflicted for ten years of time in building the road along which they dragged the stones…For the length of the road is more than half a mile, and its breadth is sixty feet, and its height, at its highest, is forty-eight feet.” Yet, Modern Egyptologists believe the real number is closer to 20,000. And the road’s detail has not been uncovered.
The Egyptians of Herodotus’s day probably did have a negative view of the old kings. According to Herodotus, “ the affliction of Egypt endured for the space of one hundred and six years, during the whole of which time the temples were shut up and never opened. The Egyptians so detest the memory of these kings that they do not much like even to mention their names.” But Herodotus was not always able to distinguish historical fact from fiction about events that occurred thousands of years before his time. The priests that he consulted faced the same problem, their stories mixed facts with fictions. This might have affected their attitude on the characters of the reigning pharaohs. There are some evidences of Khufu’s negative character in the Papyrus Westcar tales. The Papyrus Westcar tales portrays Khufu as a king that enjoyed the stories of the reigns of his predecessors, as well as tales of magic. One of the most prominent stories is the tale of Djedi the magician. In that story, a magician named Djedi claimed that he could bring the dead back to life. Here, Khufu was shown as a cruel king who wanted to use humans to conduct the experiment. Djedi refused and used animals instead. The Egyptian priest whom Herodotus drew his information from might have been in contact with such legends. And Herodotus probably took very little caution in verifying these stories.
So in conclusion, of the kings that Herodotus portrayed contain both real and fictitious kings. The time gap between Herodotus and that of Khufu is about the same as that between Confucius and Yao. However, the major difference is that Egypt has a much greater abundance of writing than China at this time, considering all kings before Khufu were not actual historical figures, the actual existence of Yao and Shun, when writing does not even exist, is highly dubious. The same goes with Moses, although the time line is shorter, the lack of writing could distort a possible figure so much(including the name) that it is really no different from myth. Menetho's history of Egypt mentioned kings such as Menes which also never existed.(If he was talking about Narmer, there are so much difference that it really shouldn't be one person)
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No the oldest parts of the Shang Shu dates back to Western Zhou times, some of them might even be from the late Shang Dynasty (according to a Chinese text book I read). Confucius was not the first one who mentions them.
The fact that both Confucius and Mozi only mentioned Yao and Shun but not Yan and Huang means something. Confucius is someone who can trust when it comes to history, whereas some of the later sources are not trustworthy when it comes to historical events and figures.
The key word is
some and unfortunately, the cannon of Yao and Shun does not fit this category. Confucius is hardly a historican, the Shang Shu is a moral book, like the OT, it is written for a purpose rather than for the sake of facts. It tries to sort out historical examples, possibly creating new ones and distorting others to portray the benevolence of kings and the bad ends of tyrants. The book's purpose really isn't about history, but moral lessons. (almost like the 3 little pigs, or to be a bit more Chinese, the story of Ke Zhou Qiu Jian from the Lu Shi Chun Qiu)
Furthermore, we have no solid prove that Confucius compiled the Shang Shu.
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