Middle East

"You are the strong one, whom I praise, the bull-calf of Anu! You are the strong one, whom I praise."

"They [the authors of Centuries of Darkness] indicate that the chronology for the time period in question, the so called “Third Intermediate Period”, is altogether shaky. They show that there are problems with the historical chronology of the Near East. And the sad fact is that the historical chronology for the rest of the Mediterranean until well after 700 BC rests on these. It is already widely known that the chronology for early Italy, during the Iron Age period, down to and including the foundation of Rome, is a complete shambles.... I feel their critical analysis is right and that a chronological revolution is on the way."

"The chronology is confused owing to the Sumerian king list’s practice of listing contemporaneous dynasties as successive."

"The minutiae of chronology does not matter because at least for the New Kingdom, the relative sequence of kings is certain so the absolute dates are less important."

"I realise that by lengthening the chronology, the few facts that the historian possesses on the most problematic periods of southern Arabian history…will be diluted in a sea of time."

"Early Egyptologists were usually more tentative about their chronology, continually revising their opinions in the light of fresh evidence. Sadly the study of Egyptian chronology seems to have become so ossified that it cannot question its fundamental assumptions, accepted more for familiarity than for any basis in fact."

"If the dates computed by Greek scholars for the fall of Troy (ranging from 1334 to 1127 with 1183 [BC] the most popular) were approximately correct, it was largely by luck for the genealogies, by which those scholars bridged the Dark Age were “heraldically” linked up with the names of epic heroes and the sons of Helen…Those of the kings of Sparta seem to have enough authentic generations to take us back to about the 9th century [BC] and thence…joined up to their heroic ancestor Herakles and to do it their earlier generations are given the improbably long average lengths of 39 years; Spartan reigns in historic times average about 25… Greek tradition may be perfectly right in saying that in the second generation after the siege of Troy, the heroic dynasties fell."

"In spite of all defects, this division into dynasties has taken so firm a root in the literature of Egyptology that there is little chance of its ever being abandoned. In the forms in which the book has reached us, there are inaccuracies of the most glaring kind…Africanus and Eusabius often do not agree; for example Africanus assigns nine kings to Dyn. XXII, while Eusabius only has three. Sometimes all that is vouchsafed to us is the number of kings in a dynasty and their city of origin…the lengths of reigns frequently differ in the two versions…the reconstructed Manetho remains full of imperfections…. Nonetheless, [it]still dominates our studies.... We are dealing with a civilisation thousands of years old and of which only tiny fragments have survived."

"The earliest home of men in this great arena of Western Asia is a borderland between the desert and the mountains, a kind of cultivable fringe of the desert, a fertile crescent having the mountains on one side and the desert on the other."

"The Fertile Crescent is considered the first of at least seven centers of agriculture origin in the world (Smith 1998). Barley, along with (Tritium spp.), (Pisum sativum L.), (Lens culinaris L.), goat (Capra aegagrus hircus), sheep (Ovis aries), and cow (Bos taurus), set the stage for the evolution of agriculture in the Near East, which eventually spread to North Africa, further east and north in Asia, and to Europe (Smith 1998)."

"The Fertile Crescent has always been in close touch with other parts of the Middle East: Turkey, Iran, the , and Egypt. Indeed the ties binding it to each of those subregions have usually been stronger and more numerous than those between any other two. With the Arabian peninsula there was, first of all, the blood tie. For millennia, the Fertile Crescent has been periodically replenished by waves of peoples and tribes migrating from the desert and settling in the steppes or sown areas of Syria and Iraq. In addition, the beduin tribes, following their camel pastures and the availability of water, travel each year hundreds of miles between their winter quarters in the peninsula and their summer abodes in the crescent. The nomads and semi nomads supplied the settled areas of Syria and Iraq with camels, the essential means of transport in the Middle East; with fine horses, used for ceremony and war, and with various animal products such as goat and camel hair."

"The names of the ancient cities in the fertile crescent ring out the beginning of the known history of mankind: , , Babylon, , , and many others, where not only agriculture, but pottery and music, and writing, were born, and geometry came to regulate land ownership, and arithmetic, perhaps to calculate taxation."

"Western Asia may be roughly divided into three belts of country, the Mountains or high Table-lands, the Fertile Lands, and the Desert. Of these three, the first and last have been ceaseless in their pressure on the second, and the history of Western Asia is largely the story of the actions and reactions on each other of the peoples from the mountains of the north, and from the southern Desert, in the effort to occupy and to hold the Fertile Lands between them. This central belt stretches in a crescent (Breasted, Ancient Times, c. iv, gives it the name of the ' Fertile Crescent ') from the border of Egypt, north and north-eastwards through Palestine and the Lebanon to the Euphrates, then eastwards to the Tigris, and then southwards through the n plain to the head of the . Assyria occupies about the centre of the crescent, Babylonia its eastern wing, while its western wing includes Syria and Palestine, and is produced into the Nile valley to the edge of the African deserts. Round this crescent ran the main roads from Mesopotamia to Egypt, which trade or aggression was bound to follow."

"In the days of Caesar Augustus There went forth this decree: Si quid rectus et justus Liveth in Galilee, Let him go up to Jerusalem And pay his scot to me.There are passed one after the other Christmases fifty-three, Since I sat here with my mother And heard the great decree: How they went up to Jerusalem Out of Galilee."

"We arrived at the scene very quickly and joined a 51-year-old woman who was in the parking lot while she was fully conscious and suffering from a shrapnel injury in her lower body. We gave her initial medical treatment in the field and then evacuated her in an MDA ambulance to the hospital as she was in a minor condition"

"Fierce was the wild billow; dark was the night; Oars labour’d heavily; foam glimmer’d white; Trembled the mariners; peril was nigh; Then said the God of God, “Peace! it is I!”Ridge of the mountain-wave, lower thy crest! Wail of Euroclydon, be thou at rest! Peril can none be,—sorrow must fly,— Where saith the Light of Light, “Peace! it is I!”Jesus, deliverer! come thou to me! Soothe Thou my voyaging over Life’s sea! Thou, when the storm of Death roars, sweeping by, Whisper, O Truth of Truth! “Peace! it is I!”"

"But now in beauty and in light we see The hills and vales of far-famed Galilee. Though man may walk no more, as in old time, With step of freedom, and with brow sublime; Though on the Jew the Moslem pours disdain, And thinks him less than reptile of the plain; Though Rapine, mocking law, may prowl the land, And Murder daily rear her blood-stained hand,— Still Nature smiles, and Galilee appears Fair as a bride, although a bride in tears. In Jezreel’s vale the corn is waving deep, Fir, larch, and myrtle grace high Tabor’s steep; In warm Sepphoris’ beds the tulip’s streak Rivals red Morn when soft her blushes break; Ten thousand pansies breathe their odorous breath, And orchards bloom round holy Nazareth; While birds with song, as cooler eve comes on, Fill the green groves of bowery Zebulon."

"And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people."

"Wading or clicking through MEMRI's materials can be a depressing act, but it is also illusion-dispelling, and therefore constructive. This one institute is worth a hundred reality-twisting Middle Eastern Studies departments in the U.S. Furthermore, listening to Arabs—reading what they say in their newspapers, hearing what they say on television—is a way of taking them seriously: a way of not condescending to them, of admitting that they have useful things to tell us, one way or the other. Years ago, Solzhenitsyn exhorted, "Live not by lies." We might say, in these new circumstances, "Live not by ignorance about lies, either." Anyone still has the right to avert his eyes, of course. But no one can say that that is not a choice.[18]"

"Media watchdog MEMRI translates one caller as saying – quote – 'We will annihilate the Jews'," said Shubert. "But, according to several Arabic speakers used by CNN, the caller actually says 'The Jews are killing us.'"

"The grand mufti of Jerusalem al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and his active involvement in the Jewish genocide have figured prominently in Israeli efforts to prove the tangible collaboration between the "Arab world" and Nazis. Here, it is imperative to distinguish between "official" and academic efforts. Although scholars are certainly more cautious in depicting the Husayni and Arab-Nazi collaboration, sometimes their work mirrors the generalization that indicts Arabs at large as active supporters or sympathizers with Nazism. The Arab-Israeli conflict's escalation and its redefinition as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict reinforced this mutual demonization. On the Israeli-Jewish side, it has triggered an emphasis on Holocaust denial and extensive, sometimes disproportionate, study of the intimate Nazi-mufti collaboration that is embodied by Husayni's unabashed enthusiasm for Nazi antisemitism and his historical role in the atrocities."

"Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. ... This was the decisive struggle; on the political plane, it presented itself in the main as a conflict between Germany and England, but ideologically it was a battle between National Socialism and the Jews. It went without saying that Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle, because platonic promises were useless in a war for survival or destruction in which the Jews were able to mobilize all of England's power for their ends....the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany's objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration."

"Von Soden observes that “since the discovery of the Indus civilization … it has been almost universally accepted that the Sumerians immigrated from the east.” The immigrants are regarded as having arrived in lower Mesopotamia either at the beginning of the Ubaid period (c. 5000 B.C.) or at the beginning of the Uruk period (perhaps c. 3500 B.C., but perhaps as late as 3250). In either case, the Sumerians seem to have fitted easily into an advanced Chalcolithic culture where writing was already in the early stages of development. Therefore, the implication is that they must have been from another advanced culture, and that points to the East. Bottero agrees that “the Sumerians must have arrived in Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium, apparently from the southeast.” Von Soden further observes that “this immigration could have succeeded entirely by land if the Sumerians immigrated from somewhere in northern India,” and refers suggestively to “the westward migration of the Sumerian groups, whose language may have been related to the Dravidian languages of India.”"

"By the end of the fourth millennium B.C. the material culture of Abydos, Ur, or Mohenjo-daro would stand comparison with that of Periclean Athens or of any medieval town. . . . Judging by the domestic architecture, the seal-cutting, and the grace of the pottery, the Indus civilization was ahead of the Babylonian at the beginning of the third millennium (ca. 3000 B.C.). But that was a late phase of the Indian culture; it may have enjoyed no less lead in earlier times. Were then the innovations and discoveries that characterize proto-Sumerian civilization not native developments on Babylonian soil, but the results of Indian inspiration? If so, had the Sumerians themselves come from the Indus, or at least from regions in its immediate sphere of influence?”"

"Both the peacock and the chicken passed through [Mesopotamia] on their way westward[;] the Sumerians called the chicken ‘ the bird from Meluhha’ and the Syrians called it the ‘Akkadian bird’."

"We can date the early Indic tradition on the basis of comparable points in ancient Mesopotamia. By this, the Ṛgveda would date back to the beginning of the third millennium BC, with some of the earliest hymns perhaps even dating to the end of the fourth millennium BC."

"With regard to Mesopotamian–Vedic relations we should take into account at least two simple but very instructive facts. First, when in the 24th century king Sargon of Agade refers to the ships in his harbour the ships are those from other countries, that is Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha. If Sargon had a mighty ocean-going fleet to trade with other countries he would have been boasting of Mesopotamian ships reaching, or returning from, foreign harbours. Second, in the Mesopotamian text Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta it is king Enmerkar of Uruk who sends a messenger and merchants (by land) to distant Aratta (a country north-west of Punjab) to obtain goods (not the other way round)."

"Strangely, however, as with Mesopotamia, almost no artefacts of clearly Iranian origin made their way to the Indus region. ‘Nearly all the evidence of Harappan relations with the West has been brought to light in foreign territories (the Persian Gulf, Mesopotamia, Iran) and not in the Indus territories,’ as another French archaeologist, Henri-Paul Francfort, put it. There is no consensus among experts to explain this one-sidedness... This broad unidirectionality—from the Indus outward—may be interpreted in different ways, but it does suggest that the Harappans were the ones who took the initiative to reach out."

"Jarrige and Hassan reject the idea that these finds were associated with invaders related to the Hissar III C complex, since "there is nothing in the Gorgan Plain and at Hissar to prove that northern Iran has been a relay station for invading people. The . . . grey ware can very well be explained within its local context" (163-164). Nor are these scholars partial to the northern steppe Andronov alternatives, since: We leave to the linguists the problem of whether Indo-European languages were introduced into the Middle Asian regions from a still unknown part of the Eurasian steppes in the course of the third millennium or if Indo-Iranian languages have been associated with these regions for a much longer period. As far as archaeology is concerned, we do think that it is increasingly necessary for specialists in Indo-lranian studies to pay attention to the . . . interrelated cultural entities of the late third and early second millennium in the regions between Mesopotamia and the Indus. It is a direction of research that is likely to be more fruitful than are traditional attempts to locate remains left by nomads from "the Steppes," attempts that were in fashion when the Indo-Iranian Borderlands were thought to be a cultural vacuum. (164)"

"Despite inviting linguists to reconsider the northern steppe hypothesis in favor of the southern route, it can be inferred from Jarrige and Hassan, as from the work of a number of archaeologists considering the problem of Indo-Aryan origins, that the Indo-Aryan- locating project exists solely due to linguistic exigencies: The development of original but closely interrelated cultural units at the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennium cannot be explained just by the wandering of a single group of invaders. The processes were obviously multidirectional in regions with strong and ancient cultural traditions. This does not preclude the fact that movement of population and military expeditions . . . may have played an important historical part but, as far as archaeology is concerned, there is nothing to substantiate a simplistic model of invasion to account for the complex economic and cultural phenomena manifest at the end of the third millennium in the regions between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. (164)"

"The balance of trade appears to have been in favor of India; more items were exported from India than imported from the Gulf and Mesopotamia.”"

"Clearly, then, as Kosambi said, There must have been a small but active settlement of Indian traders in Mesopotamia …” And yet, as the same author noted, “The reciprocal settlement seems to have been absent or less prominent in India.”"

"I shall begin by taking up the problem of the date of the beginning of this civilization. Many Indian books still refer to the date propounded first in 1946 by Mortimer Wheeler, i.e. 2500 BC. That was based on Wheeler’s own subjective estimate of the date of the earliest contact between the Indus civilization and Mesopotamia. Assuming that this contact was not significantly earlier than the reign of the Mesopotamian king Sargon and accepting 2325 BC as Sargon’s date, he arrived at the round figure of 2500 BC, allowing 175-odd years for this civilization to form a relationship with Mesopotamia. The earliest date of the Mesoptamian civilization, typified by the Early Dynastic Period is 2700/2800 BC. Thus, according to Wheeler’s scheme, the Indus civilization was later than the Mesopotamian civilization, which was natural in the light of his belief that the idea of civilization came to the Indus from the former ."

"The fact that Indus-Sarasvati merchant seals were found in the Gulf but not Mesopotamian in India, should come as no surprise."

"Indus materials are found in Mesopotamia, but the reverse is extremely rare;"

"Yazidis [were] shot and thrown like refuse into pits; men and boys beheaded in front of their families; girls as young as eight subjected to gang rape; beatings; forced conversions; torture; slavery. In a camp I visited, a woman who had been raped for an entire year, then shot in the head when her owner grew tired of her, then finally sold back to her husband, lay curled in a foetal ball in a makeshift tent, rocking and moaning to herself."

"Nobody in the West really gives a shit. And the reason nobody gives a shit, as a Yazidi refugee I spoke to said, is that in the West you have Christians, you have Muslims, you have Jews who all speak up for their co-religionists, but who cares about the Yazidi? Who cares about them?"

"I think often of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uyghurs, the Yazidi -- what ISIS did to them was truly cruel -- or Christians in Egypt and Pakistan killed by bombs that went off while they prayed in church."

"God willing, we are Yezidis,"

"At new year, on the day of rites, the lady libates water on the holy. [...] On the day when the bowls of rations are inspected, Nanshe also inspects the servants during the appointments. Her chief scribe Nisaba places the precious tablets on her knees and takes a golden stylus in her hand. [...] The king who always cares for the faithful servants, Haia, the man in charge of registration, registers on a tablet him who is said to be a faithful servant of his lady but deletes from the tablet her who is said not to be the maidservant of her lady."

"His speech was substantial, and its contents extensive. The messenger, whose mouth was heavy, was not able to repeat it. Because the messenger, whose mouth was tired, was not able to repeat it, the lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote the message as if on a tablet. Formerly, the writing of messages on clay was not established. Now, under that sun and on that day, it was indeed so. The lord of Kulaba inscribed the message like a tablet. It was just like that."

"The scribe trained in counting is deficient on clay. The scribe skilled with clay is deficient in counting."

"In 2015 Merkel in Germany made a radical gesture. After the failure of an EU plan to absorb refugees from the Syrian civil war flowing into Greece, she decided to offer them sanctuary in Germany. Over a million accepted. The reaction was fierce. An unashamedly right-wing group, Alternative for Germany, emerged in the 2018 German elections as the third largest party, strongest in the former East German provinces. Merkel, so long the queen of Europe, was almost toppled. A charismatic French president, Emmanuel Macron, elected in 2017, swiftly moved into lead position in the EU and promptly initiated yet another attempt to concentrate and reform the eurozone. Germany disagreed. Europe looked ever more divided and confused."

"I tell Europe if you don't want refugees, then you should help us get rid of this regime [of Bashar al-Assad]... I am very sorry about the Russian interference [in Syria], which has stood on the side of dictator Bashar Assad, and has begun to kill the Syrian people with their planes."

"Jordan itself is a beautiful country. It is wild, with limitless deserts where the Bedouin roam, but the mountains of the north are clothed in green forests, and where the Jordan River flows it is fertile and warm in winter. Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love every inch of it."

"Maymune Shishani, [a] descendant of Chechens who were resettled in what is now Jordan in the early years of the 20th century, tells the story of her community in a new novel, The Tears of the Wolf. The book was written in Arabic but a Russian translation is planned (kavkazr.com/a/sleza-volka-kak-chechentsev-izgnali-v-iordaniyu/30045629.html)."

"The problem is IS has offered a vision to our young, disenfranchised people. Jordan will not survive unless our leaders offer the same"

"The politicians come from a museum. Jordan has taken for granted the people’s fear of the regional situation to keep business as usual."

"There is a limit to how much the country can take; you don’t want us to collapse. “You don’t want our economic plans, our economic reform to be disrupted . . . You don’t want Jordan to be destabilised."

"Jordan is perversely lucky, and so is its king. Today, the monarchy is not only surviving—Jordan’s looking like just about the only Arab safe haven in the middle of the Middle Eastern storm."