Ancient Civilizations

Long before the Arab world took its present shape, the same territory carried the first civilisations on earth. In Mesopotamia, Sumer produced the first cities, the first writing and the first written law; Akkad built the first empire; Babylon and Assyria followed with astronomy, mathematics and libraries of clay.

Along the Nile, pharaonic Egypt sustained a state for three thousand years and left the pyramids, the temples of Karnak and Luxor and a written record that has never been matched for continuity.

On the Mediterranean coast the Phoenicians of Byblos, Tyre and Sidon carried purple dye and cedar across the sea and, more importantly, an alphabet that became the ancestor of most writing systems in use today. Carthage grew from their colonies into the great power of the western Mediterranean.

In the south, the incense kingdoms of Saba, Ma'in, Qataban and Himyar controlled the caravan routes that carried frankincense and myrrh north, and built the dam at Marib. In the north the Nabataeans cut Petra and Hegra out of sandstone. All of it left the region layered with monuments that were already ancient when Islam arrived.