MESOPOTAMIA

It took me way to long to learn about Crimea's location on the planet, and its importance in history, but Mesopotamia continues to mystify my geographically challenged brain.

It comes up from time to time. An Agatha Christie exhibit at an archeology museum. An incredible adventure book by an incredible traveller. Middle East conflicts. Museum artifacts. Old Testament stories. The stuff of the Grand Tour and the Orient Express and those who still chase these routes.



Is it strange that the news is not the first item I list? No, I live in art, and history orients me from time to time.

The trouble with remembering where Mesopotamia lies is that it baffles the geopolitical definitions of today's world. It actually is simply the land between two rivers; the Tigris and the Euphrates. It  includes Iraq, Kuwait, northern Saudi Arabia, eastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and Iran-Iraq border. It runs from the Armenian Highlands to the Persian Gulf.

Familiar names of cities are Ninevah (remember Jonah and the Whale?), Baghdad, Babylon, Ur and Basra.

The people dominating may not sound familiar; the Sumerians and the Akkadians. But the Akkadians include more familiar Assyrians and Babylonians, and domination was over 2 millennia until the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. They were followed by the First Persian Empire, then the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, then Greece, then Parthian (ancient Iran/Iraq), then Roman, until the Byzantines.