Answer:
A. The historian guessed at much of the document's text, as it had
been badly burned.
Explanation:
As the document is a code of laws used to govern the city, it is very important to know exactly what is written there. Through history, the development of laws has been characterized for using very precise terms and definitions, otherwize the permited and prohibited things could be misinterpreted. These permited and prohibited things say a lot about a culture as they determine which actions or values are estimated and which not. If the historian guessed, there could be a lot of mistakes that will eventually lead to further misinterpretations of the culture itself. Maybe the things that could seem logical for the historian were not logical in that specific culture. He is using, in some point, his values system to complete the missing points.
