Abstract
Questions as to the origins of different historical peoples and their movements through time and space have always played a vital role in human accounts of the past – whether in ancient myths or in modern historiography. The whole subject awakened new interest and became increasingly politically charged in the course of the emerging nationalism and colonialism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Against this backdrop mass migrations or “the wanderings of peoples” advanced to a central object of historiographical and archaeological research. However, in contrast to mythical accounts, modern classical and ancient studies aimed at a critical examination of these traditional narratives. Regardless the historical contexts to which historians or archaeologists refer in order to examine and to explain the origin and migrations of certain peoples, their accounts feature remarkable narrative similarities. Looking at ancient Near Eastern studies in the 19th and early 20th centuries it can not only be demonstrated to what extend historiographical migration narratives resembled each other but also how they continued to draw upon older – traditional – narrative patterns and sources.