Introduction -- The land -- Byblos: doorway of many pasts -- Baalbek and the proliferation of divinity -- Lebanon: Phoenician land -- Turkey: past and present -- Modern Jordan and ancient Persia -- Damascus, port of the desert -- Palmyra, the caravan empire -- North Syria and its dead cities -- Baghdad and the twin rivers -- The birth of civilization -- Persia and its blue mosques -- On the banks of the Nile -- Pyramids -- The Egyptian past -- Knossos and the Minoan civilization -- And last -- Both sides of the Jordan rift
