3200 Evidence of wheeled vehicles in Sumer, along with sailboats, potter's wheels, and kilns.

3100 Development of cuneiform script to record land sales and contracts.

30002500 Sumerians grow barley, bake bread, make beer.

Metal coins are used to replace barley as means of exchange.

c. 2700 Reign of Gilgamesh, legendary king of Uruk.

c. 2500 Array of grave goods placed in royal graves at Ur.

2334 Powerful Semitic-speaking Akkadian dynasty founded by Sargon I, uniting city-states of southern Mesopotamia; the world's first "empire."

c. 2100 Construction of the ziggurat at Ur.

Hebrew patriarch Abraham leaves Ur (date is speculative).

1800 Ammorites from Syrian desert conquer Sumer-Akkadia.

17921750 Old Babylonian Period. Hammurabi ascends the throne of Babylon and brings most of Mesopotamia under his control.

Babylon made the Mesopotamian capital.

Hammurabi institutes one of the first law codes in history.

1595 Babylon sacked and occupied by invaders from Iranian plateau known as Kassites.

1363 Assyrian Empire founded by Ashur-uballit.

1300 Alphabetic script developed in Mesopotamia is a refinement of the simplified cuneiform alphabet.

12951200 The Jewish Exodus from Egypt (date is speculative).

12401190 Israelite conquest of Canaan (date is speculative).

1200 The Gilgamesh epic is composed, the first known written legend.

1193 The destruction of Troy (date is speculative).

1146 Nebuchadrezzar I begins a twenty-three-year reign as king of Babylon.

1116 Tiglath-pileser I begins a thirty-eight-year reign that will bring the Middle Assyrian Empire to its highest point.

1005967 Reign of King David in Israel; Jerusalem established as capital.

967931 Reign of King Solomon in Jerusalem.

c. 850 Homer composes The Iliad and The Odyssey.

722 Conquest of Northern Kingdom of Israel by Assyria-the so-called Ten Tribes, some thirty thousand Israelites, are deported to Central Asia by Sargon II; they will disappear from history and be known as the "Lost Tribes of Israel."

693689 Assyrian king Sennacherib destroys Babylon.

663 Assyrians attack Egypt, sack Thebes, and leave vassal rulers in charge.

612 Fall of Assyrian capital of Nineveh to the Chaldeans (neo-Babylonians).

605 Persian religious leader Zoroaster (Zarathustra) founds a faith that will dominate Persian thought for centuries.

604 King Nebuchadrezzar II revives Babylon and builds the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the ziggurat that inspired the Tower of Babel as a temple to the Babylonian god Marduk.

597 Nebuchadrezzar II conquers Jerusalem. Judah's king deported to Babylon.

587/6 Fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Great Temple. Jewish exile in Babylon begins. During this time, many of the books of Hebrew scripture are first written down.

539 Persian Empire: King Cyrus captures Babylon and incorporates the city into the Persian Empire.

538 Cyrus allows the exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem.

522486 Darius I of Persia is defeated by the Greeks at Marathon in 490.

336323 The reign of Alexander the Great. In 330, the Persian Empire falls to Alexander, beginning the Hellenistic Era, in which Greek civilization and language spread throughout the Near Eastern world. Alexander dies in Babylon in 323.

T.

he next time you walk into a bar on a Friday night, order up a cold brew, and ask someone what his or her "sign" is, pause a moment and thank the ancient Mesopotamians. At the dawn of history, these people invented the seven-day week, beer, and astrology. (How they overlooked cocktail nuts is a mystery yet to be solved.) If you nurse your drink for an hour and then scribble down someone's name and number before driving home, consider that the ancient Mesopotamians also deserve credit for the sixty-minute hour, the world's first writing system, and the wheel. The list goes on. Ancient Mesopotamia was an extraordinary place that pioneered pottery, poetry, sailboats, and schools. The Mesopotamians came up with the 360-degree circle, a poem considered the first piece of written literature, formulas to predict eclipses of the sun and moon, and the mathematical concepts of fractions, squares, and square roots that still torment high school kids.

But there is something else we should not leave off this impressive list of legacies. In this so-called "dead civilization," the Mesopotamians created a richly imaginative mythic tradition crowded with warring gods, dragon-slayers, the first superhero, and an enticingly libidinous love goddess. These Mesopotamian myths not only played a central role in the daily lives and history of the people in the "cradle of civilization," but their stories and legends also placed an indelible stamp on the literature and history of the Bible.

The six-day Creation in Genesis, for instance, is widely thought to have been influenced by Mesopotamia's Creation epic, first translated a little more than a century ago and rattling religious teacups ever since with the suggestion that parts of the Bible were-gasp!-cribbed from another source. The genealogies of Adam and Eve's descendants suspiciously resemble the lists of early Mesopotamian kings, unearthed in a royal library in the ruins of Nineveh, a fabled city once buried under centuries of sand and featured in the story of Jonah and the whale. (Actually, it was a "large fish." But that's another story.) Mesopotamia's towering, pyramid-like temples, called ziggurats, made a lasting impression as the inspiration for the Tower of Babel. Perhaps most intriguing of all are their flood stories. Composed more than four thousand years ago and told in Gilgamesh-an epic poem written centuries before the Bible was set down-these tales may have influenced the Hebrew storytellers who produced their own flood account featuring a godly man named Noah. All of these ancient Mesopotamian legends would have been familiar to the Hebrews, whose patriarch Abraham came from Mesopotamia, and who often came under the thumb of a collection of aggressive Mesopotamian kings counted among the Bible's "bad guys."

Located mostly in what is modern-day Iraq, Mesopotamia was a desirable patch of real estate that became home to some of the world's first human settlements about ten thousand years ago. Watered by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers-the word "Mesopotamia" is Greek for "between the rivers"-this otherwise arid, flat plain blossomed as people learned how to control these somewhat erratic rivers with irrigation dikes and canals. Like beads on a necklace strung along the two rivers, small farming settlements grew into the world's first cities, flourishing as their surplus food production allowed for expanding trade opportunities. As they developed in wealth and size, these farming and herding communities eventually became "city-states," with merchants, skilled craftsmen, prostitutes, priests, and tax collectors, and armies of scribes who recorded everything from negotiations over the price of figs to real estate deals, law codes, epic poetry, and the military records and amorous adventures of conquering kings.

Unfortunately, the prosperity of these city-states also attracted attention. Unprotected by the vast stretches of desert that kept Egypt safe from most outsiders, the flat plains of Mesopotamia were like an open chess-board, across which armies moved freely. Mesopotamia became a land of repeated invasions and conquests, and history in the Tigris-Euphrates valley tended to be stormy and full of violent upheavals. Unlike the constant Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates were also less reliable sources of water for crops, and changed their course over many centuries, sometimes turning thriving cities into ghost towns. The unpredictable and uneven flow of the two great rivers combined with local political conflicts to shape a mythology and religion that was as much about strife as it was about universal order.

Over thousands of years, Mesopotamia was occupied and ruled by a succession of small kingdoms-some fairly belligerent-that grew to include some of the world's first empires: the Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Persians. As these empires rose and fell, power shifted and civilizations grew. Each time power changed hands, the myths of this very old land changed, too. Each new empire borrowed traditions from the one before, and Mesopotamia's myths evolved and were rewritten and reshaped to reflect new political realities. But always, there was one constant. From the earliest times, the worship of Mesopotamia's many gods-who ruled sun, wind, and water, the weather, earth's fertility, and every aspect of the natural world-played a crucial role in dictating life and society in the world "between the rivers."

What role did myths play in ancient Mesopotamia?

Think of Mesopotamia as the Rodney Dangerfield of the ancient Near East-it has never gotten the respect or star billing accorded to Egypt and Greece. Maybe it was because the people there were considered the villains of the Bible, having sacked Jerusalem, carted thousands of Jews off to captivity or oblivion, and introduced so many of the Bible's pernicious "false gods." Or maybe it was because their ancient attractions were not viewed with the same awe as those that sent worshipful tourists flocking to Egypt and Greece. (One historian describes the achievements in Mesopotamia as "less spectacular art and crumbling mudbrick ruins.") Keats didn't write an "Ode on a Mesopotamian Urn." And New Age trendsetters have not adopted the Mesopotamian ziggurat as a totem of mysterious psychic powers. Also, during much of the twentieth century, what was once Mesopotamia has largely been shut off to the Western world, due to culture, history, and politics. In case you hadn't noticed, Iraq hasn't been topping anybody's list of ten best tourist destinations for most of the past fifty years.*

Whatever the reasons, Mesopotamia took a back seat to Egypt and Greece, an oversight worth correcting, because the oversimplified-or overlooked-past of this ancient land, which has become so significant in modern times, is a fascinating piece in the jigsaw puzzle of ancient civilization. Religion, history, and myth all mingled together there, and the story of Mesopotamia's city-states and the empires that grew from them offers another vivid example of that fascinating crossroads where legend and ancient life intersect.

Like Egypt, the successive empires of Mesopotamia were theocracies-societies in which government and religion were inseparably fused. The gods of Mesopotamia didn't just make the rain fall or crops grow. These gods chose the earthly kings-or, at least, that's what the kings and temple priests told their subjects. The people existed to serve the gods-through their earthly representatives, the kings and priests. In each city-state, the local god became the symbol of the city's strength and source of its prestige, wealth, and power. To put it simply-" My god is bigger than your god."

As Mesopotamia's cities eventually expanded to become small empires, the power of their gods increased as well, and the most powerful empire, obviously, had the most powerful god. Marduk, the central deity of Babylon, took charge when Babylon became the region's preeminent city-state. Local myths were revised so that his status as a Zeus-like king of the gods was celebrated and made sacred in Mesopotamia's central Creation story. Just as Re became Egypt's state god, or Yahweh later became Israel's national god, Marduk, once an agricultural deity, emerged to lord over the pantheon of Mesopotamian deities, superseding the earlier chief god of the Sumerians, An, and taking control of the weather, the moon, rain, justice, wisdom, and war. (See below, "Who's Who of Mesopotamian Myths.") The other key concept from Mesopotamian myth was the me (pronounced "may"), a somewhat abstract collection of divine laws, rules, and regulations that governed the universe from its creation and kept it operating. Unlike the Egyptian concept of maat, which was order, truth, and justice, the Mesopotamian me was a far more complex list of institutions, people, rituals, and other elements of a culture that included more than one hundred separate characteristic items forming the basis of Sumerian society. In some respects, it was comparable to the intricate laws of ancient Judaism that went far beyond the basic Ten Commandments, and defined the role of priests and the manner of worship.

But the me was, in many ways, even more complex, covering nearly every dimension of Sumerian society. Among the varied aspects of the me were a catalog of official institutions, like kingship and the priesthood; certain ritualistic practices, including holy purification; desirable qualities of human character and moral laws; and even lists of occupations that included scribes and blacksmiths. Highly conceptual, the list of what constituted the me also included such acts as lamentation, rejoicing, sexual intercourse, and prostitution. Various parts of the me could also exist in physical objects, such as the throne-in which kingship resided-or drums that contained rhythm. Like building blocks of an orderly society, all of these basic ideas, institutions, and practices had to be maintained intact to ensure the cosmic order. Possession of the me meant to hold supreme power, and Enki, the chief god of Sumer, was the keeper of the me.

Where did Mesopotamia's gods live?

If the poet Robert Frost was right that "good fences make good neighbors," walls may be even better. To fortify their cities against invasions, the Mesopotamians built high-gated walls around their cities, with temples, palaces, and royal houses enclosed within another set of walls in their centers. Around them were "suburbs," encompassing the fields and orchards. Every city also had a riverfront harbor area, which was the center of commerce.

But the temples provided the focal point of Mesopotamian life and society. Housed within the prominent ziggurat towers that loomed high above the relatively flat plains of Mesopotamia, the temples were more than just symbolic or ritual buildings, or tombs for dead kings. Built for the cult worship of a particular god who was responsible for both the city and the people, the temples were thought to be the actual home of the gods, where they lived with their families and servants. The gods of Mesopotamia's cities might be fearsome and powerful, but they were homebodies, completely tied to their cult city and its temple, and they needed the daily attention of priests and priestesses. Each day, the rituals of feeding, clothing, and washing the god were carried out within the sanctuary. As anthropologist Gwendolyn Leick put it, "Heaven was no further than the temple roof. By providing the gods with lodgings and sustenance, the city partook of the essence of divinity."

Employing large numbers of workers, these city temples drove daily life. They were run by a priestly hierarchy and controlled enormous wealth collected through taxes and offerings, held large tracts of fields and orchards, and even functioned as "banks," making loans. Though the daily worship of the gods was a priestly duty, religion played a great part in the lives of ordinary people. Everyday worshippers attached themselves to a particular god or goddess-just as modern Christians might be especially devoted to a favorite saint-and they offered prayers and sacrifices in return for blessings and protection from evil spirits. Even though they were unable to access the inner sanctums of the temples, ordinary people participated in the great religious processions in which statues representing the gods were paraded through the streets.

Many people also heeded exorcists and diviners for prophecies and advice. In Mesopotamia, divination was a highly specialized art. The Mesopotamians believed that the whole universe was filled with coded messages about the future, and these people sought advice from expert diviners, trained for years in the art of reading the signs in animal entrails and organs, such as the liver of a freshly slaughtered lamb. Dream oracles were also popular, and the practice of astrological readings began in Mesopotamia as soothsayers attempted to find portents in the changing heavens-the beginning of carefully recorded astronomical records. As Daniel Boorstin wrote in The Discoverers, "If the rising and setting of the sun made so much difference on earth, why not also the movement of the other heavenly bodies? The [Mesopotamian] Babylonians made the whole sky a stage for their mythological imagination. Like the rest of nature, the heavens were a scene of living drama."

Originally intended to demonstrate that the king's decisions and laws had divine approval, these elaborate ancient Mesopotamian systems of reading signs, omens, and oracles were probably as ubiquitous in ancient Ur and Babylon as the "psychic reader" business is on the streets of many big cities today.

But the chief mythic event in this world came during their New Year, when a great public festival was held. This eleven-day religious observance was not just a spiritual event or festive holiday, but a national drama, a form of political theater meant to solidify the king's role as protector and provider. During the pivotal New Year celebration (which fell in April), when the ancient Creation stories were sung at great public gatherings, the king actually reenacted the role of the great fertility god in a ritual marriage to a priestess representing the goddess Inanna (aka Ishtar). This marriage ceremony-which would have been publicly consummated-was meant to ensure prosperity, strength, and order.

Using myth and belief, the rulers of Mesopotamia-and the priestly classes allied with them-created and cemented their political and social power. The importance of this leap in human history can't be overstated. It was a development as significant as the invention of the wheel or writing.

MYTHIC VOICES.

In the temple of Babylon there is a second shrine lower down in which is a great sitting figure of Bel, all of gold on a golden throne, supported on a base of gold, with a golden table standing beside it. I was told by the Chaldeans that, to make all this, more than twenty-two tons of gold were used. Outside the temple is a golden altar, and there is another one, not of gold but of great size, on which full-grown sheep are sacrificed.... On the larger altar, the Chaldeans also offer something like twenty-eight and a half tons of frankincense every year at the festival of Bel. In the time of Cyrus, there was also in this sacred building a solid golden statue of a man some fifteen feet high-I have this on the authority of the Chaldeans, although I never saw it myself.

-HERODOTUS describes Babylon in The Histories Like the "Where's Waldo?" of the ancient world, the Greek historian Herodotus also popped up in Babylon, which was the great capital city of several Mesopotamian empires as well as the Persian empire of King Cyrus (d. 530 BCE). His description of the inner sanctum of a temple, with its rooms devoted to gods, is well supported by archaeological investigations. The god whom Herodotus referred to as "Bel" (which means "Lord") was actually Babylon's central deity, Marduk, and the title of "Bel" was transformed into "Baal" in the myths that would figure significantly in the history of the Bible.

An idol devoted to Bel is also featured in the story "Bel and the Dragon," a brief addition to the biblical Book of Daniel (of lion's den fame). Set in Babylon during the time of Cyrus, the story satirizes the priests who ate the food set out before the idol of Bel. When Daniel tells Cyrus of this deception, the Persian king has the priests killed.*

What's so special about the "cradle of civilization"?

Okay. You're back in elementary school and your teacher pulls down one of those window-shade maps that tend to snap right back up. The teacher is already in trouble, since this seems more like slapstick comedy than school. Then you open your first World Civilizations textbook to a list of "key words" and see "Fertile Crescent," and "Cradle of Civilization," "Hammurabi's Code," "Nebuchadrezzar's Hanging Gardens," and "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World." The phrases are almost cliches, but they contain more than a nugget of truth, capturing the extraordinary accomplishments of the people and empires of Mesopotamia, where much of civilization began.

So what is so special about this part of the world? Why did these people in this rather dry, hot, and unappealing part of the world produce so many of civilization's "firsts"? Why here?

As any real estate broker will tell you, it comes down to three things-location, location, location.

Ancient Mesopotamia spanned a geographic area that now includes most of modern Iraq, eastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey. It extended from the marshy lowlands on the Persian Gulf in the south to the highlands of the Taurus Mountains (bordering modern Turkey) in the north, and from the Zagros Mountains (in modern Iran) in the east to the Syrian desert in the west.

The oldest known communities in ancient Mesopotamia were villages established in the Zagros foothills more than nine thousand years ago. These early sites, such as Jarmo in northern Iraq, were among the world's oldest known human settlements, along with the biblical city of Jericho, near the Dead Sea, Tell Hamoukar in modern Syria on the fringes of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, and Catalhoyuk (also called Catal Huyuk, and pronounced cha-tahl-hu-yook) in modern Turkey. With ample water supplies in otherwise dry areas, it was here that people first began to cultivate wheat and barley, domesticate animals, build crude mud houses, and keep herds of goats, sheep, and pigs.

Around 6000 BCE, some of these early farmers moved south, to the region between the future site of Babylon and the Persian Gulf. Drawn to the rivers, they settled in what became the heart of ancient Mesopotamia, in the southern end of the flat plain between the Tigris and Euphrates, roughly the area between modern Baghdad and Basra, which became all too familiar to a world that watched the war in Iraq unfold during the spring of 2003. Like the Nile, the rivers of Mesopotamia also flood, and farmers began to dig irrigation canals that would water their otherwise dry lands. This intensive agricultural undertaking demanded cooperation-and with it, the beginnings of a social order.

As the old story from Aesop put it, "Necessity is the mother of invention." The intensive communal agriculture allowed people to successfully farm, provided a constant source of food that encouraged larger settlements, and led to expanding populations. Without the pressure of needing to hunt and gather food, communities set down permanent roots and grew. Over time, their stability allowed them to produce textiles, pottery, and other inventions that marked the beginnings of civilization. The first wheel, for instance, was not used by Fred Flintstone in the Stone Age, as generations of cartoon lovers may believe, but more likely by anonymous Mesopotamians around 6500 BCE.

As their agricultural improvements succeeded, populations flourished, and the division of labor became more complex. A social hierarchy developed, in which a ruling class emerged that was responsible for organizing production and trade. The region was also lacking in many basic natural resources, such as wood, stone, and metal ores. Again, necessity led to the invention of dried mud bricks for construction. This shortfall in raw materials also made trading for other resources more important, and trade routes gradually grew along the course of the rivers. Eventually, control of key river-crossings became a source of economic, military, and political power.

How did a swamp inspire Mesopotamia's myths?

Around 5000 BCE, settlements sprang up in a place called Eridu on the Euphrates River, a southern site near the marshes that mark the transition from land to sea. The people here, who are considered the first city-dwellers, also built some of the first known religious shrines, and ruins of a small temple with an offering table and a niche for statues have been found here. This marshy, or swampy, area, where freshwater mingled with salt water, would inspire the core of the Mesopotamian Creation myths, in which the freshwater and salt water were actually imagined to be deities who created the world. Water, especially freshwater, was the key to existence in this otherwise arid, hot plain. Not surprisingly, then, in some of the world's earliest Creation stories and myths, the earth, the gods, life, and humanity emerged from these primordial Mesopotamian waters.*

Sometime before 3500 BCE, a new group moved into the region and settled on the banks of the Euphrates. Although it is not known where these people originated-most historians surmise that they came from the east-the area they settled became known as Sumer, and the civilization they built is called Sumerian. The Sumerians began to build cities that gradually became city-states, including Ur (presumed home of the biblical Abraham), Uruk (the biblical Erech), Kish, and Nippur. The preciousness of water led to "water-wars" between these city-states until the more powerful ones gradually swallowed the smaller ones. Over the next fifteen hundred years, the Sumerians gradually harnessed animals to plows, drained marshlands, and irrigated the desert to extend areas of cultivation. Their increased agricultural efficiency eventually led to the first "leisure class," allowing for the development of commerce, and with it merchants, traders, artisans, and priests, to make sure that the gods approved of everything that was going on. By 3000 BCE, the first walled cities were built in Mesopotamia, always including temple complexes within the city walls.

Although political power in these cities was initially held by free citizens and a governor, as the city-states grew and vied for power, the Sumerians also may have developed one of the world's first systems of monarchy, headed by a priest-king. Sumer's first known king-in Sumerian, the word was lugal and meant "big man"-was Etana of Kish (c. 3000 BCE), described in ancient writings as "the man who stabilized all the lands." But in one of these Sumerian cities, long before the Greeks coined the word "democracy," the "first bicameral congress" met in 3000 BCE. Prominent Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer points out that in the city of Uruk, one council made up of elders and another of arms-bearing men both met to decide whether or not to go to war with the neighboring city of Kish. This "congress" voted for war and the king approved.

The Sumerians are also credited with inventing a form of bureaucracy around the same time that the Egyptians did. Devised to manage the land, Sumer's bureaucracy consisted of a priesthood that was responsible for surveying and distributing property and collecting taxes. To make sure that everything worked, the Sumerians also invented every bureaucrat's best friend-records. That required the invention of writing, and the Sumerians are also credited with introducing the world's first system of writing around 3200 BCE, word-pictures that developed into wedge-shaped characters known as cuneiform, which comes from the Latin word cuneus, meaning "wedge." Cuneiform characters consisted of small indentations made with a wedge-shaped tool called a stylus, impressed in wet clay. The Sumerians used about six hundred characters, which ranged from a single wedge to complicated signs consisting of thirty or more wedges. The clay hardened, and the cuneiform tablets became the first known "official records" in history.

There is even a Sumerian legend to explain this invention. A messenger of a king of the city of Uruk arrived at the court of another king, but was so winded from his journey that he was unable to deliver his message. The clever king wanted to make sure that didn't happen again, so when he needed to send another message, he patted some clay and set down the words of his next messages on a tablet. The king of Uruk had invented writing. How the person at the other end could read this message was not explained in the legend.

There is still disagreement in the scholarly world as to why writing developed in Sumer, and whether it happened in other places, such as Egypt or China, either earlier or at the same time. One leading theory holds that Sumerian writing grew out of accounting, as molded clay "tokens" were used to represent quantities of different trade goods, such as oil, grain, or livestock. Early evidence does suggest that Sumerian cuneiform was used almost exclusively for these accounts for its first five hundred years. But eventually, writing evolved to express the spoken word, and among its earliest uses in Sumer was to record the ingredients of beer. There is no evidence that the ancient symbol for beer was two women in bikinis wrestling in mud.

How do we know what the Mesopotamians believed?

Here's a sobering thought. Long after most of the books we produce today are gone, the writings of these ancient Mesopotamians will still be around. Why? Because their literature, business accounts, and other writings were literally "written in stone," the hardened clay tablets that have been found in the tens of thousands in a variety of sites in what once was Mesopotamia.

Like their Egyptian neighbors, the Mesopotamians created an enormous trove of art, architecture, and, most significant, written records that have survived the ages and thousands of years of conquest, right down to modern times. The widespread chaos and subsequent looting of Baghdad's museums and ancient archaeological sites in the days following Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003 provided a vivid reminder of the area's extraordinary history. Some of the world's oldest artworks, including a five-thousand-year-old sculpture of a woman's face called the Sumerian Mona Lisa, were stripped away by looters, along with thousands of antiquities. Fortunately, many of the country's most valuable pieces had been stored out of harm's way in the run-up to the war, and thousands of other stolen items have since been returned. But there are still many missing relics, and the art world was put on high alert for these looted artworks, many of which may likely end up in a secretive and lucrative black market.

In spite of those losses, and with hopes that Iraq will eventually be reopened to a new era of scholarly archaeology, much is already known about Mesopotamia's past. The surprising secrets of Mesopotamia's history were first opened in the mid-nineteenth century, when the first great cache of cuneiform tablets was unearthed in Nineveh. An ancient city located near the modern city of Mosul in northern Iraq, Nineveh was once the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Discovered in the ruins of the library of a king named Ashurbanipal were more than 24,000 clay tablets that included business documents, personal letters, and some of the world's oldest known literature, including the epic of Gilgamesh. This treasure trove gave the world its first look at the myths and history of Sumer. Since then, many more thousands of tablets have been found in the sites of such ancient cities as Nippur, Ur, and Ebla (in modern Syria), giving archaeologists a comprehensive source of written materials from very early times in Mesopotamia, as well as their first hints of the astonishing connection of Sumer's myths to the Bible.

When Sumer disappeared, where did its myths go?

Around 2350 BCE, the peace and relative tranquility of the Sumerian civilization was dealt a blow when people from the west (probably the Arabian Peninsula) swept in, settled in the northern area of Mesopotamia, and eventually conquered Sumer. These invaders were Semitic-people who spoke a language related to modern Arabic and Hebrew.* Under a king known as Sargon I, Sumer and the northern region of Akkad were united around the year 2340 BCE, and Sargon built the city of Akkad (or Agade), established an enormous court there, and then built a new temple in the city of Nippur, an ancient city located about a hundred miles from modern Baghdad. An outstanding military leader and administrator, Sargon gained control over much of southwestern Asia. He reigned for fifty-six years, and during his rule, Semites replaced the Sumerians as the most powerful inhabitants of Mesopotamia. These Semites and their language came to be called Akkadian, after Sargon's capital.

But curiously, while the Sumerians basically disappear from history, their civilization, culture, and most of their myths and religion do not. Their gods, including the Creation goddess named Tiamat and a love goddess named Inanna, survived. The entire Sumerian pantheon of nature deities was absorbed by the new arrivals, and the Sumerian religion was largely adopted by the Akkadians, who added the Sumerian gods to the list of deities who protected their own cities, only changing their names to Akkadian ones. After Sargon's death, the Akkadian Empire was torn apart by infighting and rebellion. While a few of the Akkadian city-states maintained independence for a short while, they were soon absorbed into a rising Babylonian Empire beginning around 1900 BCE.

Built near the earlier site of Akkad, the city of Babylon-located south of modern Baghdad-emerged as the greatest of Mesopotamia's city-states, becoming an urban center that would have enormous impact, especially in biblical history. The very word "Babylon," which translated as "gate of the gods," meant that people there believed this was the spot where the gods actually came down to earth. The idea was not unique to Babylon. Almost every culture has a sacred spot it considers an "omphalos," a Greek word for navel, meaning the spot at which the gods appear on earth. The first great Babylonian civilizations-called "Old Babylonian"-flourished between 1900 and 1600 BCE under a series of kings, including Hammurabi, who made Babylon his capital.

MYTHIC VOICES.

When on high the heaven had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name, When primordial Apsu, their begetter, And Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all, Their waters mingled as a single body, No reed hut had sprung forth, no marshland had appeared, None of the gods had been brought into being, And none bore a name, and no destinies determined- Then Tiamat and Marduk joined issue, wisest of gods.

They strove in single combat, locked in battle.

The lord spread out his net to enfold her, The Evil Wind, which followed behind, he let loose in her face.