The Euphrates River, as seen from the Greco-Roman fortress of Dura-Europos. (Frederick Deknatel) Posted on 09/14/2009 7:46:21 AM PDT by Nikas777
The Euphrates River, as seen from the Greco-Roman fortress of Dura-Europos. (Frederick Deknatel)
Syria: Where war hides history
By Frederick Deknatel | Contributor 08.26.09
DURA-EUROPOS, SYRIA – Syria is Damascus to the growing number of Western tourists here. A short trip to the Greek desert city of Palmyra, about halfway to the Euphrates from the capital, is often as far east as visitors go.
Down the highway, however, where the Euphrates greens a strip of the rocky landscape, is a corner of the country less known for historical sights than for its proximity to war-torn Iraq. It is from here that militants have entered Iraq since the American invasion in 2003. The conflict has left Dura-Europos largely unseen by tourists.
(Excerpt) Read more at features.csmonitor.com ...
ping
ping for later
With the irony being that if democracy is pushed there the native Christians would be wiped out by the Muslims - see Iraq. The only thing keeping Syria a haven for Christians and free from Islamic tyranny is the Ba'athists. Welcome to the Middle East.
It is amazing that the places humanity has had the longest time to practice civilization, are often where it is the most troubled. Thanks for the article.
The current make=up in the Middle East is young - remember the Arabs supplanted the native people there.
Also, Western Europe is also young in that that Germanic barbarians also over ran the older nations there.
Maybe WW1 and WW2 are a result of that youthful blood lust of the Western European peoples?
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks Nikas777. |
||
|
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
Richard Halliburton extolled Palmayra..... where Zenobia did dwell. Alas though it is on my list along with Giza and Karnak and Isfahan, I will never be able to follow the tracks he laid out in his Book of Marvels.
History favors who writes it. History is after all the written record of past events.
I loved those books when I was a kid, and I was crushed when I found out that he had died in a sailing accident. As an 11 year old, my ambition was to meet him some day.
Although I have forgotten much of which I read, I still visualize him swimming the Panama Canal and exploring the sacrificial wells of the Incas (or was it the Mayans) in his 2nd volume. I should re-read those books.
I can remember it well, one of my finest days. I made the great achievement of completing the reading of the Book Of Marvels. It was the longest and biggest book I had ever read. It was a great achievement. I was about 11 as well.
It was my favorite and I read it over and over.
I attended a lecture at church by a Princeton scholar on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He said the largest block ever quarried was in the Temple in Jerusalem. I sat up straight because I knew and remembered the picture in the BOM of the largest quarried block still by the roadway near Balbeck. I copied the picture and the passage and sent it to Princeton to show him the error in his ways.
When I was 40, for my birthday, The special edition of the BOM was my present from my mom.
He is still my hero. I long to visit Santa Sophia or the Taj Mahal and get locked up overnight and have it all to myself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
