History has two faces, one turned toward us, the other averted. The face turned toward us is the sum total of event and remembrance. It is history recalled by those involved in it, as shapers and witnesses, doers and sufferers. The hidden face of history is not what we have forgotten, but what we have never remembered, those products of imperceptible change, extended duration, and infinitesimal progression that go unnoticed by living contemporaries and only reveal themselves to the analytical gaze of the historian.

Jan Assman, The Mind of Egypt ~ History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs