Ur, which in the Bible is called Ur in Chaldea, was the first city in the world. The Greeks called the plain landscape between Euphrates and Tigris was called Mesopotamia, which means the Land between the rivers.

The archaelogists are convinced that God or the gods sent the deluge, the mother of all floods, to Mesopotamia. The happy builder of the Ark was named Atrahis in the epos which is named after him, and the storm lasted for seven days and nights. This epos or the Gilgamesh epos inspired the authors of the Pentateuch. In Genesis the builder of the Ark is named Noah, and the storm lasted for forty days and nights.

The flood destructed the first civilization of the world. But a more advanced society was constructed on the slam of the deluge. Before the Egyptians wrote the first hieroglyph, the Sumerians formed the world. In 3700 B.C. they invented the plough share, and to transport te goods they invented the wagon with wheels. To understand their production the Sumerian began carving in soft clay tablets. In 3000 B.C. they invented the alphabet, and, presumably, it was the first alphabet of all alphabets. The Sumerians invented the notions of debet and credit, the bank system and a number system based on 6, 10 and 60.

The oldest juridical document is the law code of Ur-Nammu dated back to the 3rd dynasty of the ancient city of Ur. The 3rd dynasty of Ur, a Sumerian dynasty founded by king Ur-Nammu, came to an end ca. 2000 B.C..The law code was put into effect by king Ur-Nammu. The law code of Ur-Nammu is three centuries older than the law code of Hammurabi, the founder of Babylon. In 1901 French archaeologists fond this law text on a monument in Susa.

All Sumerian cities had a temple to honor the city god. The temples were quadrangular constructions, which were decorated with terraces. The temples were called ziggurats. The ziggurat in Ur is partly reconstructed. It is 70 metres long, 50 metres wide and 23 metres high. However, the Nebuchadnezzar\'s ziggurat in Babylon was finer. It was situated in the centre of this most beautiful city. constructed an other wonder. To stop queen Semiramis longing for the mountains, Nebuchadnezzar constructed terraces in which tall trees were planted in deep columns, and a complicated watering system irrigated the vegetation. Later, the vegetation was called Babylon\'s hanging gardens.

The kingdom of Babylon inherited most of the Asyrian Empire, and reached its zenith under Nebuchadnezzar. The Assyrians were not losers. They divided the circle into 360 degrees, and they were among the pioneers who started using degrees of latitude and degrees of longitude. It was useful to the Assyrians as they invented the sailing-boat.

In 539 B.C. Cyrus king of Persia stood outside the city gates, and he claimed that the inhabitants should surrender. The Babylonians did surrender peacefully, and the proud city of Babylon was incorporated in the Persian Empire. In 331 B.C. the next imperialist arrived. It was Alexander the Great, and he ruled a world empire, which noone had never seen anything like. However, three years later he died in Babylon at the age of 32 years. There were rumours going about that Alexander had been poisoned, but, probably, he died of exhaustion.

1000 years later the followers of Muhammed ruled the old kingdom of Sumer. In 762 B.C the Abbasidian caliphate founded a new capital on the riverbanks of Tigris. They called the city Bagdad, and it became the city of adventures and thoughts. During the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid the young Sheherazad started telling stories to avoid the danger of being killed at the crack of the dawn. She continued to tell stories in the next three years, in one thousand and one night. At that time Bagdad was the secong largest city of the world. The largest was Constantinopel.

The gods and the goddesses in Phoenician religion were influenced by other cultures. In some instances the names of gods changed very little when they were borrowed. For example, Ashtarte in Phoenician and Aphrodite in Greek or Adonis in both.

According to one Greek mythological vesion, Aphrodite was in love with Adonis. He was so handsome that both Aphrodite and Persephone, who also loved Adonis, quarrelled over him. Their violent quarrel was brought before Zeus, and he decided that for a third part of the year Adonis was to dwell by himself, for a third part with Aphrodite, and for a third part with Persephone.

According to an other mythological version, Persephone restored him to life on the condition that he spend six months of the year with her and the rest (spring and summer) with Aphrodite.

Adonis had one of his main temples in the Phoenician city of Byblos. Aphrodite had her main temple south of Byblos. It was situated at the Adonis River.