A perusal of the texts of the Seven Tablets of Creation, which King was enabled, through the information contained in them, to arrange for the first time in their proper sequence, shows that the main object of the Legend was the glorification of the god Marduk, the son of Ea (Enki), as the conqueror of the dragon Ti?mat, and not the narration of the story of the creation of the heavens, and earth and man. The Creation properly speaking, is only mentioned as an exploit of Marduk in the Sixth Tablet, and the Seventh Tablet is devoted wholly to the enumeration of the honorific titles of Marduk. It is probable that every great city in Babylonia, whilst accepting the general form of the Creation Legend, made the greatest of its local gods the hero of it. It has long been surmised that the prominence of Marduk in the Legend was due to the political importance of the city of Babylon. And we now know from the fragments of tablets which have been excavated in recent years by German Assyriologists at Kal'at Shark?t (or Shargat, or Shar'at), that in the city of Ashur, the god Ashur, the national god of Assyria, actually occupied in texts[1] of the Legend in use there the position which Marduk held in four of the Legends current in Babylonia. There is reason for thinking that the original hero of the Legend was Enlil (Bel), the great god of Nippur (the Nafar, or Nufar of the Arab writers), and that when Babylon rose into power under the First Dynasty (about B.C. 2300), his position in the Legend was usurped at Babylon by Marduk.

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To the ancient Egyptians, animals were created by the gods and given rights equal to that of mankind. They saw animals not as their subjects, but rather as independent beings, and treated them with respect.

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An ancient custom apparently common to many primitive peoples on all continents, was the gathering on tribal New Year's days to recall the beginning of things. Rejoicing and pageantry marked these colorful meetings, held the first day of each year to commemorate what was to those ancient peoples the universe's first "New Year's Day."

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"And I have decided to lay the foundation of this tomb, indestructible by the ravages of time, in closest proximity to the heavenly throne, wherein the outer form of my person shall rest through immeasurable time." The young god-king Antiochus I, ruler of the independent kingdom of Commagene near the Euphrates River in what is today southern Turkey, wrote those lines over two thousand years ago. The intervening millennia have indeed left his outer form as undisturbed as he had intended, and his tomb atop a 7000-foot mountain peak, with the overwhelming ceremonial-religious site that surrounds it, is now one of modern Turkey's most remarkable historical treasures. But in the king's own time it was more. The great hierothesion or sacred place on Nemrud Dagh was the center of a kingdom and a religion, the interface between three civilizations and two empires, and the heart of an enduring mystery.

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Alexander's Macedonian veterans?the hard men he had led to victory after victory, the nucleus of his forces?could not believe that their beloved young leader was dying. They demanded, with an insistence that verged on mutiny, to see him themselves. All day long, grief-stricken soldiers shuffled past in an endless line as Alexander, barely alive, lay on his cot in Nebuchadrezzar's already-ancient palace in Babylon. A slight nod of his head, a movement of his hand or eyes, was all he could manage to acknowledge them, but "he greeted them all," wrote a chronicler.

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Along with Britain, the Middle East is one of the two parts of the world where aerial archeology was pioneered in the early 20th century. During World War I, British, French and especially German pilots took hundreds of photographs of the region from the air; many were of archeological sites. Over the next two decades, Syria was extensively photographed from above, thanks to the efforts of P?re Antoine Poidebard. In the adjacent British mandates of Iraq and Transjordan, Poidebard's counterpart was Sir Aurel Stein, whom the Royal Air Force flew there in 1938 and 1939. But since that time, there has been no systematic aerial archaeology in the region.

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"I am going to have a house-warming," read the invitation. "Come yourself to eat and drink with me. Twenty-five women and 25 men shall be in attendance." The party favor promised was "10 wooden chariots and 10 teams of horses"?a lavish gift by ordinary standards, but this invitation was from royalty. It was sent some 3500 years ago by Kadasman-Enlil, king of Babylonia, to Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), pharaoh of Egypt. The message was inscribed on a pillow-shaped clay tablet, small enough to be carried easily in one hand or slipped into a satchel. The letter was one of hundreds uncovered in the late 1800's, when a peasant woman rummaging through the ruins of Akhetaten, an ancient city near modern-day Tell El-Amarna, came across a cache of small clay tablets covered with unfamiliar script. She took several to a merchant, who immediately purchased them. Word of the tablets spread quickly, and in a short time the site was buzzing with local residents, each hoping to find something of marketable value. The hoard was excavated, and most pieces were sold to the highest bidders. Today there are about 380 significant texts scattered among private collectors, antique dealers and museums, mostly in Egypt and Europe, and collectively these clay-tablet texts are known as the Amarna Letters.

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The Arabian Nights appeared in English in the 1740's when John Newbery began publishing children's books in London, and by the end of the century three tales from the Nights had established themselves as children's "classics" in both Great Britain and the United States: Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp and, perhaps the most popular in the New World, Sindbad the Sailor.

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