Word: mesopotamia
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...work in the government.) Low-level Sahwa members have been encouraged to return to the jihadis' fold. Indeed, in mid-March, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), al-Qaeda in Iraq's main front group, posted a communique on several jihadist websites announcing an amnesty for "every Muslim in Mesopotamia, even if he acted badly in the past," urging them to return to the insurgency. "This new stage is very serious," said the message, signed by alleged ISI leader Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. "It's necessary for all the Sunnis to stand together...
...Iraq and Afghan theaters of war: the enemy's weapons of choice in both countries include suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). But the river valleys of Iraq are very different terrain from the mountains and hills of Afghanistan. The equipment the U.S. used in the flatlands of Mesopotamia isn't likely to be as effective in the high crags of Central Asia. Indeed, apart from sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the U.S. is looking to redesign their equipment - from the gear they carry to the vehicles they drive to the drones that spot trouble ahead...
...That something is an appreciation of beautiful objects and the history they embody, two things curators will go to great lengths to protect. After U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, looters besieged the country's national museum, stealing 8,000 objects that had come from ancient Mesopotamia. Donny George, the Iraqi museum's former director, phoned from Baghdad and described the situation to a curatorial colleague in London. That curator spoke to MacGregor, who phoned then Prime Minister Tony Blair's culture secretary. A few hours later, U.S. tanks were moving into position to guard Iraq's finest museum...
...Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C.," which runs till March 21, is a landmark gathering of over 300 artifacts from collections in 12 countries, primarily in the eastern Mediterranean. Some of the objects are simply stunning - such as a curved ivory wand from Mesopotamia, whose delicately chiseled engravings, still intact after 4,000 years, were meant to ward off evil spirits from harming an infant. But there's a larger magic at work: seen through the display's myriad vessels, statues, seals and pendants, the cultures of antiquity take shape in a world system threaded...
...chronologically, "Babylon" unpacks some of the world's most iconic artifacts to explain the shifting motives of the city's rulers. By the early 18th century B.C., Hammurabi, the sixth King of Babylon, had used an aggressive military policy to conquer rival city-states and to establish Babylon as Mesopotamia's political heart. But Hammurabi was concerned about more than expansion, as demonstrated by the magnificent Code of Hammurabi stela, a 7-ft.-high (2 m) column of basalt upon which he inscribed 282 codified laws and punishments in cuneiform, the Babylonian script that predates even hieroglyphics. Although its prescriptions...