- 7 -

	For a long time, Western man believed that his civilization was the
gift of Rome and Greece. But the Greek philosophers themselves wrote
repeatedly that they had drawn on even earlier sources. Later on,
travelers returning to Europe reported the existence in Egypt of
imposing pyramids and temple-cities half-buried in the sands, guarded
by strange stone beasts called sphinxes.
	When Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1799, he took scholars with him
to study and explain these ancient monuments. Near Rosetta, one of his
officers found a stone slab on which was carved a proclamation from 196
B.C. written in the ancient Egyptian pictographic writing (hieroglyphic)
as well as in two other scripts.
	The decipherment of the ancient Egyptian script and language, and
the archaeological efforts that followed, revealed to Western man that
a high civilization had existed in Egypt well before the advent of the
Greek civilization. Egyptian records spoke of royal dynasties that began
circa 3,100 B.C. - two full millennia before the beginning of Hellenic
civilization. Reaching its maturity in the fifth and fourth centuries
B.C., Greece was a latecomer rather than an originator.
	Was the origin of our civilization, then, in Egypt?
	As logical as that conclusion would have seemed, the facts
militated against it. Greek scholars did describe visits to Egypt, but
the ancient sources of knowledge of which they spoke were found
elsewhere. The pre-Hellenic cultures of the Aegean Sea - the Minoan on
the island of Crete and the Mycenaean on the Greek mainland - revealed
evidence that the Near Eastern, not the Egyptian, culture had been
adopted. Syria and Anatolia, not Egypt, were the principal avenues
through which an earlier civilization became available to the Greeks.
	Noting that the Dorian invasion of Greece and the Israelite
invasion of Canaan following the Exodus from Egypt took place at about
the same time (circa the 13th century B.C.), scholars have been
fascinated to discover a growing number of similarities between the
Semitic and Hellenic civilizations. Professor Cyrus H. Gordon (Forgotten
Scripts; Evidence for the Minoan Language) opened up a new field of
study by showing that an early Minoan script, called "Linear A",
represented a Semitic language. He concluded that "the pattern (as
distinct from the content) of the Hebrew and Minoan civilizations is the
same to a remarkable extend," and pointed out that the island's name,
Crete, spelled in Minoan "Ke-re-ta", was the same as the Hebrew word
"Ke-re-et" ("walled city") and had a counterpart in a Semitic tale of
a king of Keret.
	Even the Hellenic alphabet, from which the Latin and our own
alphabets derive, came from the Near East. The ancient Greek historians
themselves wrote that a Phoenician named Kadmus ("ancient") brought them
the alphabet, comprising the same number of letters, in the same order,
as in Hebrew; it was the only Greek alphabet when the Trojan War took
place. The number of letters was raised to twenty-six by the poet
Simonides of Ceos in the 5th century B.C.





- 8 -


	That Greek and Latin writing, and thus the whole foundation of our
Western culture, were adopted from the Near East, can easily be
demonstrated by comparing the order, names, signs, and even numerical
values of the original Near Eastern alphabet with the much later ancient
Greek and the more recent Latin.
	The scholars were aware, of course, of Greek contacts with the Near
East in the first millennium B.C., culminating with the defeat of the
Persians by Alexander the Macedonian in 331 B.C. Greek records contained
much information about these Persians and their lands (which roughly
paralleled today's Iran). Judging by the names of their kings - Cyrus,
Darius, Xerxes - and the names of their deities, which appear to belong
to the Indo-European linguistic stem, scholars reached the conclusion
that they were part of the Aryan ("lordly") people that appeared from
somewhere near the Caspian Sea toward the end of the second millennium
B.C. and spread westward to Asia Minor, eastward to India, and southward
to what the Old Testament called the "lands of the Medes and Parsees."
	Yet all was not that simple. In spite of the assumed foreign origin
of these invaders, the Old Testament treated them as part and parcel of
biblical events. Cyrus, for example, was considered to be an "Anointed
of Yahweh" - quite an unusual relationship between the Hebrew God and
a non-Hebrew. According to the Book of Ezra, Cyrus acknowledged his
mission to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and stated that he was
acting upon orders given by Yahweh, whom he called "God of Heaven."
	Cyrus and the other kings of his dynasty called themselves
"Achaemenids" after the title adopted by the founder of the dynasty,
which was Hacham-Anish. It was not an Aryan but a perfect Semitic title,
which meant "wise man" and it was given to the Achaemenids by the deity
they called "Wise Lord", whom they depicted as hovering in the skies
within a Winged Globe, as shown on the royal seal of Darius.
	It has been established by now that the cultural, religious, and
historic roots of these old Persians go back to the earlier empires of
Babylon and Assyria, whose extent and fall is recorded in the Old
Testament. The symbols that make up the script that appeared on the
Achaemenid monuments and seals were at first considered to be decorative
designs. Engelbert Kampfer, who visited Persepolis, the Old Persian
capital, in 1686, described the signs as "cuneates", or wedge-shaped
impressions. The script has since been known as cuneiform.
	As efforts began to decipher the Achaemenid inscriptions, it became
clear that they were written in the same script as inscriptions founds
on ancient artifacts and tablets in Mesopotamia. Intrigued by the
scattered finds, Paul Emile Botta set out in 1843 to conduct the first
major purposeful excavation. He selected a site in northern Mesopotamia,
near present-day Mosul, now called Khorsabad. Botta was soon able to
establish that the cuneiform inscriptions named the place Dur Sharru
Kin. They were Semitic inscriptions, in a sister language of Hebrew, and
the name meant "walled city of the righteous king." Our textbooks call
this king Sargon II.
	This capital of the Assyrian king had at its center a magnificent
royal palace whose walls were lined with sculptured bas-reliefs, which,


- 9 -


if placed end to end, would stretch for over a mile. Commanding the city
and the royal compound was a step pyramid called a ziggurat; it served
as a "stairway to Heaven" for the gods.
	The layout of the city and the sculptures depicted a way of life
on a grand scale. The palaces, temples, houses, stables, warehouses,
walls, gates, columns, decorations, statues, artworks, towers, ramparts,
terraces, gardens - all were completed in just five years. According to
Georges Contenau (La Vie Quotidienne a Babylone et en Assyrie), "the
imagination reels before the potential strength of an empire which could
accomplish so much in such a short space of time," some 3,000 years ago.
	Not to be outdone by the French, the English appeared on the scene
in the person of Sir Austen Henry Layard, who selected as his site a
place some ten miles down the Tigris River from Khorsabad. The natives
called it Kuyunjik; it turned out to be the Assyrian capital of Nineveh.
	Biblical names and events had begun to come to life. Nineveh was
the royal capital of Assyria under its last three great rulers:
Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal. "Now, in the fourteenth year
of king Hezekiah, did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all
the walled cities of Judah," relates the Book of the Kings (II Kings
18:13), and when the "Angel of the Lord" smote his army, "Sennacherib
departed and went back, and dwelt in Nineveh."
	The mounds where Nineveh was built by Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal
revealed palaces, temples, and works of art that surpassed those of
Sargon. The area where the remains of Esarhaddon's palaces are believed
to lie cannot be excavated, for it is now the site of a Muslim mosque
erected over the purported burial place of the prophet Jonah, who was
swallowed by a whale when he refused to bring Yahweh's message to
Nineveh.
	Layard had read in ancient Greek records that an officer in
Alexander's army saw a "place of pyramids and remains of an ancient
city" - a city that was already buried in Alexander's time! Layard dug
it up, too, and it turned out to be Nimrud, Assyria's military center.
It was there that Shalmaneser II set up an obelisk to record his
military expeditions and conquests. Now an exhibit at the British
Museum, the obelisk lists, among the kings who were made to pay tribute,
"Jehu, son of Omri, king of Israel."
	Again, the Mesopotamian inscriptions and biblical texts supported
each other!
	Astounded by increasingly frequent corroboration of the biblical
narratives by archaeological finds, the Assyriologists, as these
scholars came to be called, turned to the tenth chapter of the Book of
Genesis. There Nimrod - "a mighty hunter by the grace of Yahweh" - was
described as the founder of all the kingdoms of Mesopotamia.

		And the beginning of his kingdom:
		Babel and Erech and Akkad, all in the Land of Shin'ar.
		Out of that Land there emanated Ashur where
			Nineveh was built, a city of wide streets;
		and Khalah, and Ressen - the great city
			which is between Nineveh and Khalah.

- 10 -


	There were indeed mounds the natives called Calah, lying between
Nineveh and Nimrud. When teams under W. Andrae excavated the area from
1903 to 1914, they uncovered the ruins of Ashur, the Assyrian religious
center and its earliest capital. Of all the Assyrian cities mentioned
in the Bible, only Ressen remains yet to be found. The name means
"horse's bridle"; perhaps it was the location of the royal stables of
Assyria.
	At about the same time as Ashur was being excavated, teams under
R. Koldewey were completing the excavation of Babylon, the biblical
Babel - a vast place of palaces, temples, hanging gardens, and the
inevitable ziggurat. Before long, artifacts and inscriptions unveiled
the history of the two competing empires of Mesopotamia: Babylonia and
Assyria, the one centered in the south, the other in the north.
	Rising and falling, fighting and coexisting, the two constituted
a high civilization that encompassed some 1,500 years, both rising circa
1,900 B.C. Ashur and Nineveh were finally captured and destroyed by the
Babylonians in 614 and 612 B.C., respectively. As predicted by the
biblical prophets, Babylon itself came to an inglorious end when Cyrus
the Achaemenid conquered it in 539 B.C.
	Though they were rivals throughout their history, one would be hard
put to find any significant differences between Assyria and Babylonia
in cultural or material matters. Even though Assyria called its chief
deity Ashur ("all-seeing") and Babylonia hailed Marduk ("son of the pure
mound"), the pantheons were otherwise virtually alike.
	Many of the world's museums count among their prize exhibits the
ceremonial gates, winged bulls, bas-reliefs, chariots, tools, utensils,
jewelry, statues, and other objects made of every conceivable material
that have been dug out of the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia. But the
true treasures of these kingdoms were their written records: thousands
upon thousands of inscriptions in the cuneiform script, including
cosmologic tales, epic poems, histories of kings, temple records,
commercial contracts, marriage and divorce records, astronomical tables,
astrological forecasts, mathematical formulas, geographic lists, grammar
and vocabulary school texts, and, not least of all, texts dealing with
the names, genealogies, epithets, deeds, powers, and duties of the gods.
	The common language that formed the cultural, historical, and
religious bond between Assyria and Babylonia was Akkadian. It was the
first known Semitic language, akin to but predating Hebrew, Aramaic,
Phoenician, and Canaanite. But the Assyrians and Babylonians laid no
claim to having invented the language or its script; indeed, many of
their tablets bore the postscript that they had been copied from earlier
originals.
	Who, then, invented the cuneiform script and developed the
language, its precise grammar and rich vocabulary? Who wrote the
"earlier originals"? And why did the Assyrians and Babylonians call the
language Akkadian?
	Attention once more focuses on the Book of Genesis. "And the
beginning of his kingdom: Babel and Erech and Akkad." Akkad - could
there really have been such a royal capital, preceding Babylon and
Nineveh?

- 11 -


	The ruins of Mesopotamia have provided conclusive evidence that
once upon a time there indeed existed a kingdom by the name of Akkad,
established by a much earlier ruler, who called himself a "sharrukin"
("righteous ruler"). He claimed in his inscriptions that his empire
stretched, by the grace of his god Enlil, from the Lower Sea (the
Persian Gulf) to the Upper Sea (believed to be the Mediterranean). He
boasted that "at the wharf of Akkad, he made moor ships" from many
distant lands.
	The scholars stood awed: They had come upon a Mesopotamian empire
in the third millennium B.C.! There was a leap - backward - of some
2,000 years from the Assyrian Sargon of Dur Sharrukin to Sargon of
Akkad. And yet the mounds that were dug up brought to light literature
and art, science and politics, commerce and communications - a full-
fledged civilization - long before the appearance of Babylonia and
Assyria. Moreover, it was obviously the predecessor and the source of
the later Mesopotamian civilizations; Assyria and Babylonia were only
branches off the Akkadian trunk.
	The mystery of such an early Mesopotamian civilization deepened,
however, as inscriptions recording the achievements and genealogy of
Sargon of Akkad were found. They stated that his full title was "King
of Akkad, King of Kish"; they explained that before he assumed the
throne, he had been a counselor to the "rulers of Kish." Was there,
then, the scholars asked themselves, an even earlier kingdom, that of
Kish, which preceded Akkad?
	Once again, the biblical verses gained in significance:

			And Kush begot Nimrod;
		He was first to be a Hero in the Land...
		And the beginning of his kingdom:
		Babel and Erech and Akkad.

	Many scholars have speculated that Sargon of Akkad was the biblical
Nimrod. If one reads "Kish" for "Kush" in the above verses, it would
seem Nimrud was indeed preceded by Kish, as claimed by Sargon. The
scholars then began to accept literally the rest of his inscriptions:
"He defeated Uruk and tore down its walls... he was victorious in the
battle with the inhabitants of Ur... he defeated the entire territory
from Lagash as far as the sea."
	Was the biblical Erech identical with the Uruk of Sargon's
inscriptions? As the site now called Warka was unearthed, that was found
to be the case. And the Ur referred to by Sargon was none other than the
biblical Ur, the Mesopotamian birthplace of Abraham.
	Not only did the archaeological discoveries vindicate the biblical
records; it also appeared certain that there must have been kingdoms and
cities and civilizations in Mesopotamia even before the third millennium
B.C. The only question was: How far back did one have to go to find the
FIRST civilized kingdom?
	The key that unlocked the puzzle was yet another language.



- 12 -


	Scholars quickly realized that names had a meaning not only in
Hebrew and in the Old Testament but throughout the ancient Near East.
All the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian names of persons and places
had a meaning. But the names of rulers that preceded Sargon of Akkad did
not make sense at all: The king at whose court Sargon was a counselor
was called Urzababa; the king who reigned in Erech was named
Lugalzagesi; and so on.
	Lecturing before the Royal Asiatic Society in 1853, Sir Henry
Rawlinson pointed out that such names were neither Semitic nor Indo-
European; indeed, "they seemed to belong to no known group of languages
or peoples." But if names had a meaning, what was the mysterious
language in which they HAD the meaning?
	Scholars took another look at the Akkadian inscriptions. Basically,
the Akkadian cuneiform script was syllabic: Each sign stood for a
complete syllable (ab, ba, bat, etc.), yet the script made extensive use
of signs that were not phonetic syllables but conveyed the meanings
"god", "city", "country", or "life", "exalted", and the like. The only
possible explanation for this phenomenon was that these signs were
remains of an earlier writing method which used pictographs. Akkadian,
then, must have been preceded by another language that used a writing
method akin to the Egyptian hieroglyphs.
	It soon became obvious that an earlier language, and not just an
earlier form of writing, was involved here. Scholars found that Akkadian
inscriptions and texts made extensive use of loanwords - words borrowed
intact from another language (in the same way that modern Americans
would borrow the German word "Kindergarten"). This was especially true
where scientific or technical terminology was involved, and also in
matters dealing with the gods and the heavens.
	One of the greatest finds of Akkadian texts was the ruins of a
library assembled in Nineveh by Ashurbanipal; Layard and his colleagues
carted away some 25,000 tablets from the site, many of which were
described by the ancient scribes as copies of "olden texts." A group of
twenty-three tablets ended with the statement: "23rd tablet: language
of Shumer not changed." Another text bore an ambiguous statement by
Ashurbanipal himself:

		The god of scribes has bestowed on me the gift of
			the knowledge of his art.
		I have been initiated into the secrets of writing.
		I can even read the intricate tablets in Shumerian;
		I understand the enigmatic words in the stone
			carvings from the days before the Flood.

	The claim by Ashurbanipal that he could read intricate tablets in
"Shumerian" and understand the words written on tablets from "the days
before the Flood" only increased the mystery. But in January 1869 Jules
Oppert suggested to the French Society of Numismatics and Archaeology
that recognition be given to the existence of a pre-Akkadian language
and people. Pointing out that the early rulers of Mesopotamia proclaimed


- 13 -


their legitimacy by taking the title "King of Sumer and Akkad", he
suggested that the people be called "Sumerians", and their land,
"Sumer."
	Except for mispronouncing the name (it should have been Shumer,
not Sumer), Oppert was right. Sumer was not a mysterious, distant land,
but the early name for southern Mesopotamia, just as the Book of Genesis
had clearly stated: The royal cities of Babylon and Akkad and Erech were
in "the Land of Shin'ar." (Shinar was the biblical name for Shumer.)
	Once the scholars had accepted these conclusions, the flood gates
were opened. The Akkadian references to the "olden texts" became
meaningful, and the scientific community soon realized that tablet with
long columns of words were, in fact, Akkadian-Sumerian lexicons and
dictionaries, prepared in Assyria and Babylonia for their own study of
the first written language, Sumerian.
	Without these dictionaries from long ago, we would still be far
from being able to read Sumerian. With their aid, a vast literary and
cultural treasure opened up. It also became clear that the Sumerian
script, originally pictographic and carved in stone in vertical columns,
was then turned horizontally and, later on, stylized for wedge writing
on soft clay tablets to become the cuneiform writing that was adopted
by the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other nations of the
ancient Near East.
	The decipherment of the Sumerian language and script, and the
realization that the Sumerians and their culture were the fountainhead
of the Akkadian-Babylonian-Assyrian achievements, spurred archaeological
searches in southern Mesopotamia. All the evidence now indicated that
the beginning was there.
	The first significant excavation of a Sumerian site was begun in
1877 by French archaeologists; and the finds from this single site were
so extensive that others continued to dig there until 1933 without
completing the job.
	Called by the natives Telloh ("mound"), the site proved to be an
early Sumerian city, the very Lagash, in fact, of whose conquest Sargon
of Akkad had boasted. It was indeed a royal city whose rulers bore the
same title Sargon himself had adopted, except that it was in the
Sumerian tongue: EN.SI ("righteous ruler"). Their dynasty had started
circa 2,900 B.C. and lasted for nearly 650 years. During this time,
forty-three "ensi's" reigned without interruption in Lagash. Their
names, genealogies, and lengths of rule were all neatly recorded.
	The inscriptions provided much information. Appeals to the gods "to
cause the grain sprouts to grow for harvest... to cause the watered
plant to yield grain," attest to the existence of agriculture and
irrigation. A cup inscribed in honor of a goddess by "the overseer of
the granary" indicated that grains were stored, measured, and traded.
	An "ensi" named Eannatum left an inscription on a clay brick which
makes it clear that these Sumerian rulers could assume the throne only
with the approval of the gods. He also recorded the conquest of another
city, revealing to us the existence of other city-states in Sumer at the
beginning of the third millennium B.C.


- 14 -


	Eannatum's successor, Entemena, wrote of building a temple and
adorning it with gold and silver, planting gardens, enlarging brick-
lined wells. He bragged of building a fortress with watchtowers and
facilities for docking ships.
	One of the better-known rulers of Lagash was Gudea. He had a large
number of statuettes made of himself, all showing him in a votive
stance, praying to his gods. This stance was no pretense: Gudea had
indeed devoted himself to the adoration of Ningirsu, his principal
deity, and to the construction and rebuilding of temples.
	His many inscriptions reveal that, in the search for exquisite
building materials, he obtained gold from Africa and Anatolia, silver
from the Taurus Mountains, cedars from Lebanon, other rare woods from
Ararat, copper from the Zagros range, diorite from Egypt, carnelian from
Ethiopia, and a score of other materials from lands as yet unidentified.
	When Moses built for the Lord God a "Residence" in the desert, he
did so according to very detailed instructions provided by the Lord.
When King Solomon built the first temple in Jerusalem, he did so after
the Lord had "given him wisdom." The prophet Ezekiel was shown very
detailed plans for the Second Temple "in a Godly vision" by a "person
who had the appearance of bronze and who held in his hand a flaxen
string and a measuring rod." Ur-Nammu, ruler of Ur, depicted in an
earlier millennium how his god, ordering him to build for him a temple
and giving him the pertinent instructions, handed him the measuring rod
and rolled string for the job.
	Twelve hundred years before Moses, Gudea made the same claim. The
instructions, he recorded in one very long description, were given to
him in a vision. "A man that shone like the heaven... by whose side
stood a divine bird... commanded me to build his temple." This "man,"
who "from the crown on his head was a god," was later identified as the
god Ningirsu. With him was a goddess who "held the tablet of her
favorite star of the heavens;" her other hand "held a holy stylus," with
which she indicated to Gudea "the favorable luminous star that circles
the earth." A third man, also a god, held in his hand a tablet of
precious stone; "the plan of a temple it contained." One of Gudea's
statues shows him seated, with this tablet on his knees; on the tablet
the "divine" drawing can clearly be seen.
	Wise as he was, Gudea was baffled by these architectural instruc-
tions, and he sought the advice of a goddess who could interpret diving
messages. She explained to him the meaning of the instructions, the
plan's measurements, and the size and shape of the bricks to be used.
Gudea then employed a male "diviner, maker of decisions" and a female
"searcher of secrets" to locate the site, on the city's outskirts, where
the god wished his temple to be built. He then recruited 216,000 people
for the construction job.
	Gudea's bafflement can readily be understood, for the simple-
looking "floor-plan" supposedly gave him the necessary information to
build a complex ziggurat, rising high by seven stages. Writing in "Der
Alte Orient" in 1900, A. Billerbeck was able to decipher at least part
of the divine architectural instructions. The ancient drawing, even on


- 15 -


the partly damaged statue, is accompanied at the top by groups of
vertical lines whose number diminishes as the space between them
increases. The divine architects, it appears, were able to provide, with
a single floor-plan, accompanied by seven varying scales, the complete
instructions for the creation of a seven-stage high-rise temple.
	It has been said that war spurs Man to scientific and material
breakthroughs. In ancient Sumer, it seems, temple construction spurred
the people and their rulers into greater technological achievements. The
ability to carry out major construction work according to prepared
architectural plans, to organize and feed a huge labor force, to flatten
land and raise mounds, to mold bricks and transport stones, to bring
rare metals and other materials from afar, to cast metal and shape
utensils and ornaments - all clearly speak of a high civilization,
already in full bloom in the third millennium B.C.

	But as masterful as even the earliest Sumerian temples were, they
represented but the tip of the iceberg of the scope and richness of the
material achievements of the first great civilization known to Man.
	After excavating at Lagash, the archaeologist's spade uncovered
Nippur, the onetime religious center of Sumer and Akkad. Of the 30,000
texts found there, many remain unstudied to this day. At Shuruppak,
schoolhouses dating to the third millennium B.C. were found. At Ur,
scholars came upon magnificent vases, jewelry, weapons, chariots,
helmets made of gold, silver, copper, and bronze, the remains of a
weaving factory, court records - and a towering ziggurat whose ruins
still dominate the landscape. At Eshnunna and Adab, the archaeologists
found temples and artful statues from pre-Sargonic times. Umma produced
inscriptions speaking of early empires. At Kish, monumental buildings
and a ziggurat from at least 3,000 B.C. were unearthed.
	Uruk (Erech) took the archaeologists back into the fourth millenni-
um B.C. There they found the first colored pottery baked in a kiln, and
evidence of the first use of a potter's wheel. A pavement of limestone
blocks is the oldest stone construction found to date. At Uruk, the
archaeologists also found the first ziggurat - a vast man-made mound,
on top of which stood two temples, one white, the other red. The world's
first inscribed texts were also found there, as well as the first
cylinder seals. Of the latter, Jack Finegan (Light from the Ancient
Past) said, "The excellence of the seals upon their first appearance in
the Uruk period is amazing." Other sites of the Uruk period bear
evidence of the emergence of the Metal Age.
	In 1919, H.R. Hall came upon ancient ruins at a village now called
El-Ubaid. The site gave its name to what scholars now consider the first
phase of the great Sumerian civilization. Sumerian cities of that
period, ranging from northern Mesopotamia to the southern Zagros
foothills, produced the first use of clay bricks, plastered walls,
mosaic decorations, cemeteries with brick-lined graves, painted and
decorated ceramic wares with geometric designs, copper mirrors, beads
of imported turquoise, paint for eyelids, copper-headed "tomahawks,"
cloth, houses, and, above all, monumental temple buildings.


- 16 -


	Farther south, the archaeologists found Eridu - the first Sumerian
city, according to ancient texts. As the excavators dug deeper, they
came upon a temple dedicated to Enki, Sumer's God of Knowledge, which
appeared to have been built and rebuilt many times over. The strata
clearly led the scholars back to the beginnings of Sumerian civiliza-
tion: 2,500 B.C., 2,800 B.C., 3,000 B.C., 3,500 B.C.
	Then the spades came upon the foundations of the first temple
dedicated to Enki. Below that, there was virgin soil - nothing had been
built before. The time was circa 3,800 B.C. That is when civilization
began.
	It was not only the first civilization in the true sense of the
term. It was a most extensive civilization, all-encompassing, in many
ways more advanced than the other ancient cultures that had followed it.
It was undoubtedly the civilization upon which our own is firmly based.
	Having begun to use stones as tools some 2,000,000 years earlier,
Man achieved this unprecedented civilization in Sumer at around 3,800
B.C. And the perplexing fact about this is, that to this very day the
scholars have no inkling who the Sumerians were, where they came from,
and how and why their civilization appeared at all.
	For its appearance was sudden, unexpected, and out of nowhere. H.
Frankfort (Tell Uqair) called it "astonishing." Pierre Amiet
(Elam) termed it "extraordinary." A. Parrot (Sumer) described it as "a
flame which blazed up so suddenly." Leo Oppenheim (Ancient Mesopotamia)
stressed "the astonishingly short period" within which this civilization
had risen. Joseph Campbell (The Masks of God) summed it up in this way:
"With stunning abruptness...there appears in this little Sumerian mud
garden...the whole cultural syndrome that has since constituted the
germinal unit of all the high civilizations of the world."