The original Ishtar Gate (left, a 1980s replica ... wrote a scribe of ancient Sumer, portraying a dark time in the land that would become Iraq. That 4,000-year-old lament sounded all too ...

This is a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet from the Ur III period, c.2100 B.C. This was the heyday of the Sumerian civilisation which occupied much of modern day Iraq. Sumerian was a non-Semitic ...