As for those storehouse inventories, I don't think it helped that Victorian-era archaeologists were a bunch of romantics who kept looking for some mythical empire of philosopher priest-kings in every unknown civilization. I remember that before Mayan hieroglyphs were deciphered (in my lifetime!), that the popular presentation of Mayan ruins and steles and such like were full of BS about "peaceful priest kings" and "gentle people" (unlike the Aztecs, of course, who were probably libeled by the Spanish priests anyway )...

Once they deciphered Mayan and found out the content of all those steles was pretty much the same as you'd find on an obelisk of Rameses II or stele of Sargon III, ("I, King of A, smote the godless heathens and put up this stele to commemorate how awesome I am") that nonsense stopped.

The teaching of history, rhetoric and logic is horribly neglected in the present public education system, at least in my country. Logic and rhetoric, frankly, need to be taught again, because the Internet is full of bad debaters, and people who are too easily swayed by cheap tricks and bad arguments.