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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Posted on 03/30/2003 10:53:51 PM PST by JohnHuang2
U.S. Marching in the Footsteps of Abraham
By ROBERT H. REID .c The Associated Press
DOHA, Qatar (AP) - As the U.S.-led coalition rolls by the rivers of Babylon, American troops are marching through the cradle of Western civilization, following in the footsteps of Biblical prophets and ancient conquerors.
The modern names - Karbala, Afak, Nasiriyah - may be unfamiliar to most Americans. But the history written around those towns resonates throughout Western civilization thousands of years later.
Take Nasiriyah, a Euphrates River crossing where U.S. Marines have been battling Iraqi troops and militiamen for nearly a week. About 20 miles to the southwest lie the ruins of the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldees, which the Bible says was the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham.
Ur, once a flourishing religious center, was the city where the Book of Genesis says God told Abraham to ``leave your country, your people and your father's household'' and journey to the Land of Canaan. In heeding that call, Abraham laid the foundations for Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
History permeates the very soil of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known in ancient times as Mesopotamia. In the fertile fields, the ancient Sumer people established one of the world's oldest civilizations.
The peoples who followed them - the Akkadians, Baylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Arabs and others - all contributed to the richness of civilization.
Traces of peoples and places long disappeared remain, sometimes in the most unlikely places. On Sunday, troops of the 3rd Infantry Division advanced to the outskirts of Karbala, a Shiite Muslim religious shrine and tomb of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
About 30 miles to the east of Karbala across the Euphrates is the site of Babylon, the fabled city where King Hammurabi drafted the world's first code of laws about 18 centuries before the birth of Jesus.
For more than 1,000 years, Babylon was one of the world's premier cities, where Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and to which the Hebrews were deported after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem about 586 B.C.
On Sunday, U.S. Marines moved into the town of Afak to clear out Saddam Hussein's militiamen who were threatening American supply lines heading north.
Afak is about five miles south of the site of the ancient city of Nippur, which for thousands of years was the religious center of Sumerian and Mesopotamian civilization.
The ancient Sumerians believed that Nippur, now a desolate, desert mound, was the place where their supreme deity, Enlil, created mankind. The city flourished for more than 5,000 years, surviving the rise and fall of empires until A.D. 800, when the city was abandoned.
Another ancient site on the U.S. route of march did not enjoy the same longevity. Seleucia, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, was founded in 307 B.C. by the Greeks when they decided to remake the map of the Middle East.
For nearly a century, Seleucia was among the great Hellenistic cities of the Middle East, comparable in its time to the great metropolis of Alexandria, Egypt, which survives to this day.
Seleucia replaced Babylon as the commercial center for the region until it was conquered, first by the Parthians and then by Romans, who destroyed it in A.D. 164.
MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN
The southern part of the country, between the Tigris and Euphrates, is believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden. Today, it is an empty, desolate waste, deprived of water by Saddam.
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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