THE LEGACY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Preface

The Legacy of the Middle East is the product of a remarkable international collaboration between representatives of three diverse agencies: a public university in the United States, an administrative unit of city government from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and a private, non-profit American organization devoted to the humanities.

The exhibition was conceived and curated by Professor Denise Schmandt-Besserat, a distinguished scholar of Art and Archaeology at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Texas at Austin. Panels on Medieval Islamic scholars and the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were organized by Engineer Sami Saleh Nawar, Director of the Jeddah Department of Historical Preservation, Saudi Arabia. The exhibition was designed and fabricated by the Texas Humanities Resource Center, a division of the Texas Council for the Humanities. The Humanities Resource Center has also managed the design and production of print, electronic, and video resources that accompany the exhibition.

One copy of the exhibition resides in Saudi Arabia. The American version is essentially identical, except that it contains 20, rather than 21 panels. The information and images on panels 3 and 4 are combined into one panel, and the concluding panel (20) emphasizes the evolution of the Latin (English) alphabet, which is used in the United States

Please note that in the exhibition, the notation BP “before the present” is used rather than BC or BCE. The “present” may be defined as the year 2000.

The Legacy of the Middle East

Denise Schmandt-Besserat

Professor of Middle Eastern Studies

The University of Texas at Austin

Introduction

On the occasion of King Abdul Aziz Ibn Abdul Rahman Al-Saud’s centennial, The Legacy of the Middle East celebrates the glorious heritage from the region presently known as the Arab world.

The Legacy of the Middle East steps back in time to honor some of the profound economic and social changes, technological inventions and cultural and artistic innovations made in the Middle East that changed forever the face of the world. The panels highlight, in particular:

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Agriculture

Domestication of Animals

Cities

The State

TECHNOLOGY

Monumental architecture

Metallurgy

Alloys

The Wheel

Rotary Motion and the Potter’s Wheel

Glass

CULTURE

Concrete Counting

Abstract Counting

Writing

The Alphabet

1. Agriculture

Two of humankind’s major turning points were initiated in the Middle East: 1. Agriculture, and 2. Cities.

Agriculture was a revolution in the relation between humans and their environment. Instead of hunting and gathering vegetables and fruit for survival, people tended fields and orchards. This extraordinary change in lifestyle took place about 10,000 years ago along the foothills of the Lebanon, Taurus and Zagros Mountains.

Plant remains, such as carbonized seeds or tiny pollen grain, recovered in archaeological excavations bear evidence that agriculture has its roots in the Middle East. According to archaeological sites in Syria, Jordan and Palestine, the earliest domesticated plants were cereals, namely, barley, rye and two wheat varieties, emmer and einkorn. From the Middle East, agriculture spread to the West. This explains why these grains, indigenous to the Middle Eastern grasslands, became the staples of most western nations.

The highly variable physical environment of the Middle East incited experimenting with different crops. Lentils, peas and vetches also featured among the early cultivated plants. Horticulture followed with the cultivation of pistachio nuts, pears and plums.

Agriculture instigated the development of important technologies. The Middle East claims the invention of the hoe and, later, the plow for tilling the land, and of sickles for harvesting. Sickles are particularly noteworthy because they were made of multiple micro blades inserted into a wooden handle and represent examples of early composite tools. But of all inventions in the Middle East, the plow had the greatest consequences by increasing the yield of crops to feed an ever-expanding population.

2. Domestication of Animals

Animal husbandry was part and parcel of the Agricultural Revolution.

About 12,000–10,000 years ago Middle Eastern cultures started to systematically tame and domesticate animals. This first step in the symbiosis between man and animals provided

* Better control over food resources

* Energy

* Protection, and

* More efficient hunting.

Domesticated flocks provided quantities of storable protein or calories in close proximity to human settlements. The domestication of sheep and goats that occurred hand-in-hand with the beginning of cereal production, ca. 10,000 years ago created “walking larders.”

Cattle were important at the Jordanian site of ’Ain Ghazal, near Amman, as early as 9200 years ago. It is likely that by then products such as milk, leather, hair, and dung were already utilized.

As the process of domestication increased, it became possible for some animals to be used for riding and carrying or pulling burdens. The camel (Camelus), specifically the dromedary camel that was to play a crucial role for centuries in the movement of goods, seems to have been first domesticated in Arabia about 5000 years ago.

However, the first animal to be raised for labor in the Middle East was probably the donkey. In 5000 BP chariots used for transport or warfare were pulled by teams of four asses. The horse was already domesticated when it was introduced from central Europe to western Asia about 4000 BP.

In fact, the first animal to be intimately associated with people was the dog. The remains of a dog at the Palegawra Cave in Northern Iraq bear evidence that canine domestication was already accomplished by 12,000 BP. The dog’s skeleton shows morphological changes characteristic of animal husbandry, such as a decreased size compared to wild specimens and crowded teeth.

No doubt the dog served as a guardian, warning humans of impending dangers. An 8500 BP painting of Catal Hüyük, Turkey, shows a dog participating in hunting, which was then still important for meat procurement.

3. Cities and Civilization

After agriculture, cities were the second major turning point in humankind’s cultural evolution that originated in the Middle East. Warka, in present day south Iraq, is the site of ancient Uruk, regarded as the first city on earth. In 5000 BP Uruk covered an area of about 5.5 square kilometers—double the size of classical Athens 2500 years later.

Cities were the cradle of civilization. In 5000 BP Uruk had a population of 15,000–30,000 individuals living in closer proximity than ever before. Instead of falling into chaos, the cities rose to civilization or new levels of economic, social and cultural complexity.

Cities meant a new economy. The creation of a market promoted the specialization of labor. Skilled individuals devoted full time to crafts, bringing them to new levels of excellence. Moreover, artisans shared innovations and emulated one another, resulting in technological and scientific discoveries.

Cities meant a new form of interaction between humans. At a time when travel was difficult, cities brought together people of various origins who differed in customs, life style, values and languages. The citizens exchanged ideas and stimulated one another towards new social, political, cultural, literary and philosophical advances.

Cities meant the development of art. Carved stone vessels exemplify the level of artistic sophistication of the Uruk workshops. The sculptors decorated the vases with elaborate compositions and with a new concern for making the figures more lifelike.

4. The State

The relative isolation of the early cities favored the formation of states. A state united a city with its satellite towns and villages and the surrounding land. This political unification of a region led to specialization for a more efficient use of human and natural resources. The major urban center became the seat of government and provided services. The towns furnished craft goods, and the rural communities produced food and raw materials.

The state introduced a new type of political leadership. The rulers rose above tribal bonds to ensure the peaceful cohabitation of a mixed population and the harmonious cooperation of an unprecedented number of people. The first leaders increased their prestige by wearing status symbols such as special headdresses or a particular hairdo.

The state initiated an economy of redistribution. Households and communities pooled their resources in order to undertake extensive works for the welfare of all, such as the construction of irrigation canals and defensive ramparts.

Seals are eloquent remains of the efficient state administration. Officials controlled the collection and redistribution of goods by applying their seals to jars, baskets, sacks and bundles of merchandise. Seals also served to authenticate documents such as clay envelopes holding tokens and tablets.

Made of colorful or semi-precious stones, the seals were carved in negative in order to leave a positive imprint on the clay devices that fastened goods. Some of these tiny artifacts count among the greatest art masterpieces of the world. They feature daring compositions including fine details executed with remarkable precision at a time when the magnifying glass was not yet invented. These admirable precursors of our present-day humble rubber stamps are yet another unique contribution of the Middle East.

5. Monumental Architecture

The early Middle Eastern cities erected monumental public buildings that challenged architects and engineers to new levels of technological sophistication.

Five thousand years ago, Uruk boasted of its majestic, monumental architecture surrounded by parks and gardens. The dimensions of the Uruk buildings, reaching up to 80 by 50 meters, were astounding at the time. In fact, the Uruk edifices surpassed in size the celebrated Greek monuments of the Athens Acropolis, such as the Parthenon (70 x 31 m), built more than three millennia later.

Although little information is available on the architects’ and masons’ tool kits, they certainly included the rod and measuring line for surveying, as well as lifting techniques and the plumb-line for erecting steep walls. Moreover, the building corners were oriented to the cardinal points, which required knowledge of the movement of the stars and planets in the sky.

Bringing quantities of stone, timber and other raw materials from distant quarries and forests put new demands on shipping and land transport.

The decoration of the Uruk buildings initiated features that came to be used the world over, such as buttresses, columns and porticoes. The walls were covered with a kind of mosaic made of stone or clay cones dipped in bright colors such as red and black before being embedded in the mortar.

Monumental architecture in Mesopotamia culminated in the mighty Ziggurats that stood out in the city skylines from 4000 to 2300 BP. The stepped towers, reaching a height of 20–30 meters, consisted of three to seven superimposed terraces. In 4000 BP, the Ur ziggurat was an innovative building faced with fired bricks and featuring ingenious engineering devices for the evacuation of rain waters. The monumental stairway led to a small edifice built above three terraces, perhaps originally painted in different colors.

6. Metallurgy

The Stone Age was brought to an end with the discovery of metal working in the Middle East. Metallurgy revolutionized tools and weapons. It was the first step towards modern machinery and technology.

Metal working started with copper about 9000 BP. Copper is found in various mountainous regions of the Middle East and in particular in eastern Saudi Arabia, in the Rayden area, in Oman and in Wadi Arabah, Jordan.

No doubt, native copper attracted attention because it was a shiny and heavy stone. Copper was also malleable and could be hammered into various shapes to form small objects such as pendants. Applying low heat—annealing—facilitated the manufacture of useful fishhooks and awls.

The next step was to understand that copper could be melted at about 1083o C and cast.Egyptian tomb paintings illustrate furnaces activated by blowpipes or bellows perhaps able to produce the melting temperature of copper. The paintings also show how the hot liquid metal was collected in clay crucibles and poured in molds.

Copper resources greatly increased about 7000 BP, with the development of smelting. It was then realized that bright blue or green stones, like azurite or malachite, could produce copper, when subjected to fire. The smelting process consisted of mixing small fragments of ore with charcoal and bringing them to about 900o C. Charcoal reduced the copper oxide minerals to produce metallic copper as follows:

2 Cu0 + C = 2 Cu + Co2

Pieces of slag, or scoria of metal, found in the sands of Irq al-Banban shows that the Neolithic cultures of Saudi Arabia were among the first to master smelting. About 6000 BP, copper axes were cast with great skill. By then, the craft was fully developed technically: Casting, hammering, repoussé, chasing, soldering, riveting, engraving, inlay and gilding were practiced, as well as the related skills of smelting and refining.

The most important metals employed by the ancient smiths were gold, silver, tin, lead, and copper. Electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, was regarded as a precious metal also. Gold, silver, electrum and copper were used in Jewelry and for ceremonial and funerary objects, usually in conjunction with semi-precious stones of contrasting color, such as lapis lazuli or carnelian.

7. Alloys

An alloy is the combination of two metals in order to increase quality. Copper was among the first metals to be alloyed about 5000 years ago. The resulting material was bronze.

The earliest bronze consisted of copper and arsenic. These first alloys were perhaps unintentional since copper and arsenic are sometimes naturally mixed in mineral deposits. Arsenic had two advantages. First, it increased the hardness and durability of copper. Second, it lowered the smelting temperature.

Bronze consists mostly of copper with the addition of 5 to 10% of tin. The discovery of tin bronze was remarkable because tin deposits are rare in the Middle East. Tin occurs in the Eastern Desert of Egypt and in the Taurus Mountains.

Excavations of the ancient mine of Kestel in eastern Turkey have provided information on early bronze manufacture. Tin production, or benefication, was complex and labor intensive. After being mined, the tin ore, cassiterite, was crushed with stone hammers and ground into small particles between stone slabs, in order to separate the fine tin particles from the quartz matrix in which they were embedded. Then the ore was washed and sorted.

Smelting involved :

* Placing the tin ore together with charcoal in a furnace.

* With the help of bellows, generating a temperature of 800-900o C.

* Creating a reducing, or oxygen-poor, atmosphere to remove the oxide fraction of the

cassiterite as follows:

Sn O2 + C = Sn + CO2

The smelting operation produced slag, or scoria of metal, that were:

* Broken out of the crucibles.

*Reprocessed many times to concentrate enough metallic tin in order to be:

** Cast in ingots for transport or

** Addedto copper to form bronze.

Objects were produced by hammering out pieces of bronze on an anvil or by casting the liquid metal in molds. Pins, mirrors, vessels, and razors were among the first luxury items made of bronze, about 4900 BP.

More importantly, about 4500 BP, chisels, saws and elaborate socketed bronze axes became part of artisans’ tool kits. Traces of decayed wood indicate that the metal heads were hafted with wooden handles. Such tools opened new possibilities for crafts such as woodworking.

Bronze weaponry changed the nature of warfare. The first organized armies, about 4500 years ago were equipped with bronze spear- and arrowheads, scimitars, or curved blades, and battle-axes as well as bronze helmets and armors.

Most commonly bronze was cast using the lost-wax method. This consists of making a wax model of the object to be cast, covering it first with layers of fine clay and ending with coarse clay. The clay mold was then heated; this allowed the liquefied wax to evacuate through carefully placed ducts. The hollow space left by the wax was filled with hot liquid bronze. When the bronze had cooled, the mold was broken open and the bronze object removed. It was smoothed to a desired surface finish.

8. The Wheel

Before the wheel, loads were transported on animals and human backs or dragged with a sledge.

The invention of the wheel in ancient Sumer some 5500 years ago revolutionized transport and communication. The wheel amounts to an infinite series of levers. It multiplies by at least five times the load that people and animals can pull or carry on their back.

The evolution of the wheel is known from clay models and art images. The first wheels were made of three planks of wood held together with metal clamps.

After 4000 BP, spoked wheels increased the speed and maneuverability of vehicles. The manufacture of spoked wheels required great expertise. The wood was bent with heat into a full hoop or segment of a hoop. The spokes and hub were made separately and fitted together.

Today wheels play a considerable role in bringing people together and in trade.

9. Rotary Motion and the Potter’s Wheel

The wheel introduced the continuous and complete rotary motion. This was to facilitate many tasks such as:

* Drawing water from the well orthe river.

* Grinding cereals into flour.

* Lifting heavy weights.

* Counting time.

The potter’s wheel was one of the earliest applications of the rotary movement beyond transport. The early examples consisted of a round wooden plate built on a pivot. The potter activated the wheel with his feet or with the help of an assistant.

The transformation of the one-directional movement of a man’s gesture into a continuous circular movement had significant consequences. By increasing the speed of production, the potter’s wheel transformed the pottery craft from a home activity to an industry able to supply an entire region.

The potter’s wheel allowed people to produce perfectly symmetrical vessels and to multiply the repertory of pottery shapes, including convenient new features such as handles and spouts. Fine examples of wheel-made pottery from Dharan date to about 4000 years ago and from Tayma about 3200 BP.

10. Glass

Glass is a truly wondrous material: it is hard, rigid, durable but transparent. Glass was first invented in the Middle East about 4500 BP.

Two components were combined to make ancient glass: a glass former and a glass modifier. Quartz sand provided silica, the glass former. But quartz melts at 1710o C, a much higher temperature than could be obtained in third millennium kilns. Sodium carbonate, added in the form of plant ashes or potassium carbonate from geological deposits, was the glass modifier. It acted as a flux to lower the melting point of the quartz sand to about 1100o C. Colors were also added in the form of metallic oxides to make blue and green glass.

Glass–making developed from glazing techniques used in Egypt as early as 6000 BP. The earliest known glass objects were beads from Nippur, Iraq, dating to 4250 BP. They were shaped by core-molding. The technique consisted of forming a clay core around a metal rod and repeatedly dipping it in hot viscous glass. The clay core kept the glass from adhering to the metal rod and facilitated the removal of the completed bead.

Beads, amulets, and other small items, like kohl tubes, represent the majority of glass objects recovered in the Middle East until around 3500 BP. Kohl tubes were used as containers for kohl, a black powdery substance used as an eye-liner. The small vessels were also made by the core-molding technique. They have a long, almost cylindrical body. Some have a thick rim, tooled while hot to form a series of vertical ribs. The dark color of the vessel was often enlivened by patterns in opaque white. This was achieved by twisting a thread of white glass around the object and combing it into decorative chevrons.

The first glass vessels appeared in Egypt about 3500 BP. Open vessels such as saucers or bowls were cast by placing powdered glass in a closed mold, which was heated to fusion temperature and then allowed to cool slowly. Decorations with complex designs of rosettes and lotus flowers were wheel cut into the outer surface.

A glass workshop excavated in Tell el-Amarna in Egypt produced glass furnaces, crucibles and glass ingots of different colors.

The glass-blowing technique was invented about 2100 years ago.

11. Counting

Counting, as we know it today, is the outcome of a long evolution that started many centuries ago in the Middle East.

Tokens, used as counters in the earliest farming villages 10,000 years ago, are the first evidence for counting. The tokens were small clay objects modeled in many shapes, such as cones, spheres, disks, cylinders or tetrahedrons.

Each token shape represented a specific kind of goods. For example, cylinders represented animals, while cones and spheres stood, respectively, for a small and a large measure of grain.

The fact that tokens coincided with the domestication of plants and animals and stood for products of the farm suggests that agriculture generated the need for counting.

When cities came about, the shapes of tokens multiplied and many bore markings. These new tokens stood for finished products manufactured in workshops. For example, disks with sets of lines were used to count textile pieces, and ovoids were used for units of oil. The complex tokens therefore suggest that about 5500 years ago the rise of industry put new pressure on counting.

The token system illustrates the first step in the evolution of counting, called concrete counting. Concrete counting was strictly limited to keep accounts of goods. Concrete counting used the simplest principle of one-to-one correspondence. One ovoid stood for one jar of oil, two ovoids for two jars of oil, etc. Finally, concrete counting had special number words to count different types of goods. This explains why special counters were necessary to count different types of goods.

Concrete counting was an extraordinary invention. It was the first necessary step towards abstract counting—when numbers became applicable to any item. Abstract counting was related to the invention of writing. It is also a Middle Eastern legacy.

12. Abstract Counting

Civilization meant more than social and technological innovations. It required the acquisition of complex thought processes to handle information about things that were not visible. We owe the step from concrete to abstract numbers to the Middle East.

Consider the difference between

• Concrete counting with tokens 10,000 years ago

The token for “Jar of oil” is repeated as many times as the number of jars to be counted.

• and Abstract counting on a tablet, 5,000 years ago.

On the tablet, the sign for “jar of oil” is preceded by numerals: circular signs =10 and wedges =1. Thus, 30 + 3 = 33 jars of oil.

The tablet shows that with the invention of writing, the concept of number was separated—abstracted—from that of the item being counted.

As a result of abstract counting:

• The same numerals could be applied to anything counted.

With concrete counting, each product was counted with different number words and, consequently, different tokens.

• Numerals for numbers like “10” meant an economy of notation. They replaced the same token repeated ten times.

Abstract numbers meant the beginning of arithmetic and mathematics. They paved the way to larger and larger numbers. Finally, the invention of Arabic numerals with a sign for zero and place value made computation easy and counting limitless.

The symbols to express abstract numbers were not new. They derived from the former tokens representing small and large units of grain: the impression of a cone token that formerly stood for a small measure of grain was a wedge with the value “1”; that of a sphere representing a large measure of grain became a circular marking with the value “10.”

With the greater use of numbers also came the need for larger and larger numbers. In the early cities, the most common large number in everyday life was 60. It was called “the big one,” which suggests that at some time, it had been the highest number. But by 4500 BP the largest number had grown to 36,000. It was probably used very rarely, and then only by accountants to calculate tax collections.

Abstract counting was the response to new demands of the state administration. The redistribution systems that brought together large amounts of goods required new ways of manipulating larger amounts of data with greater precision.

13. Writing

Writing was invented in present day Iraq. It is regarded as the single most important invention of mankind. Writing makes it possible to store information, bringing together an amount of knowledge, which is well beyond the ability of a single human to remember, yet at the same time is available to all. It is this accumulated knowledge which makes all of mankind’s other great inventions possible—everything from space ships to philosophy.

Writing was not invented in one day but derived from a system of clay tokens used to count goods in pre- history. Writing replaced the simple tokens some 5500 years ago, when life in first cities put new pressure on business and administration.

A clay envelope filled with tokens found in Dharan illustrates the first step from tokens to writing. Such hollow clay balls kept together the tokens representing a particular debt.

Because the envelopes hid the tokens enclosed, people had the idea to impress the counters onto the surface in order to show how many tokens of what shape were inside.

Reducing the three-dimensional tokens to two-dimensional signs constituted the invention of writing. The impressions of tokens were the first signs of writing.

Once the tokens could be read from their markings, their presence inside the envelope became superfluous. Solid tablets showing token markings replaced the hollow envelopes.

Later, characters incised with a pointed tool, called pictographs, illustrated more clearly the shape of tokens and their markings.

In turn, a reed stylus with a triangular end transformed the pictographs into wedge shapes characters called cuneiform. The cuneiform script, the first script ever invented, was used in the entire Middle East for 3000 years.

The major developments in writing are these:

10,000 BP: use of tokens

5500 BP: the envelope

5300 BP: markings on the envelope

5200 BP: impressed tablets

5100 BP: pictographic tablet

4900 BP: cuneiform tablet.

14. The Arabic Alphabet

An alphabet is a writing system that consists of a set of letters, each standing for a single sound of voice. There are many alphabets in the world.

All alphabets ultimately derive from a first alphabet invented about 3500 years ago, probably in the region of present-day Lebanon.

With its 22 letters, each representing a consonant, the first alphabet, called the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet, was a totally new departure from the previous writing systems that had hundreds of signs standing either for one thing (logograms) or a for group of sounds (syllabic). The Proto-Sinaitic alphabet was based on acrophony. In other words, it consisted of small pictures like an ox head, a house, a fish or an eye, each representing the first sound of the corresponding word.

Thamudic, Lihyanic or Safaitic inscriptions dating about 2600-2000 BP, found at Tubuk, Taima, Madaa’n Saleh, Jebel Ghunaim, al-Milihiyaand al’Ula, show that early on, people of the Arabian Peninsula adapted the alphabet to write their various languages closely related to Arabic.

The Phoenician merchants, who crisscrossed the Mediterranean Sea selling goods such as cedar wood and ivories had a great impact on the diffusion of the alphabet. They brought the new writing system to Greece perhaps as early as 2700 BP. The Greek alphabet was in turn modified to become the Latin alphabet presently used in the western world.

Twenty-two hundred years ago the powerful Nabataean Arab Kingdom that ruled from North Hijaz to the Sinai, left important monuments inscribed in their Aramaic language. The Nabatean script also derived from the Phoenician alphabet.

In turn, the Arabic Alphabet inherited from the Nabatean script and, therefore, is descendant of the Phoenician Alphabet. Early Arabic inscriptions, such as those from Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimal, in present day Jordan, show that the form of the Arabic letters remained relatively unchanged after their formation, about 2400 BP.

Why are alphabets so important?

• Alphabets are efficient. With only 28 letters, the Arabic alphabet can transcribe all words of the Arabic Language, long or short. With only 26 letters, the Latin alphabet can transcribe all words of the English language. Words can then be strung into sentences, paragraphs, chapters and volumes to communicate any possible thought, idea or problem plain or complex.

• Because a few letters are easy to learn, the alphabet allows widespread literacy. Among the modern alphabets, the Arabic and Latin alphabets are the two writing systems most widely diffused in the world and used by the greatest number of people.

• The alphabet provides a system of classification. Names in telephone books, words in the dictionary, streets on the city map are listed according to the special order of the letters of the alphabet.

14a. The Latin Alphabet

An alphabet is a writing system that consists of a set of letters, each standing for a single sound of voice. There are many alphabets in the world.

All alphabets ultimately originated from a first alphabet invented about 3500 years ago, probably in the region of present-day Lebanon.

With its 22 letters, each representing a consonant, the first alphabet, called the Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite alphabet, was a totally new departure from the previous writing systems that had hundreds of signs standing either for one thing (logograms) or a for group of sounds (syllabic). The Proto-Canaanite alphabet was based on acrophony. In other words, it consisted of small pictures like an ox head, a house, a fish or an eye, each representing the first sound of the corresponding word.

The Phoenician merchants, who crisscrossed the Mediterranean Sea selling goods such as cedar wood and ivories had a great impact on the diffusion of the alphabet. They brought the new writing system to Greece perhaps as early as 2700 BP. The Greeks added letters for vowels. As a result the Greek alphabet had 27 letters.

From Greece the alphabet spread to Etruria, in present day Italy. The Etruscans modified the forms of the letters of the Greek alphabet to lay the base for the Latin alphabet presently used in the western world.

Selected References

Beginning Books

Black, Jeremy, and Anthony Green. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia.Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.

Collon, Dominique. Ancient Near Eastern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Crawford, Harriet. Sumer and the Sumerians. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Foster, Benjamin R. From Distant Days.Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1995.

McCall, Henrietta.Mesopotamian Myths, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

Maisels, Charles K. The Near East: Archaeology in the Cradle of Civilization.London: Routledge, 1993.

Nissen, Hans J.The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000-2000 BC. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Reade, Julian. MesopotamiaLondon: British Museum, 1991.

Roaf,Michael. Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1990; New York: Facts on File, 1990.

Advanced Books

Hallo, William W.Origins, the Ancient Near Eastern Background of some Modern Western Institutions.Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996.

Kuhrt, Amélie.The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 BC.2 vols.London: Routledge, 1995.

Postgate, J.N. Early Mesopotamia.London: Routledge, 1992.

Conclusion

The Legacy of the Middle East honors the nameless geniuses who, by their vision, creativity, ingenuity, imagination, courage and patience changed the ways of mankind with new economic and social systems such as agriculture and cities; invented fundamental technologies such as metallurgy and the wheel; and created new communication systems such as writing, the alphabet or numerals.

It is an awesome question to ask what our lives would be today, without these inventions.