John Wilson had passed the U.S. State Departments tough Foreign Service exam, but the toughest part was still ahead: he had to learn Arabic. Fortunately, a teacher called Arwri was around to help.

Heard once, it is never forgotten — the adhan, Islam's stirring, evocative call to prayer, echoing from a minaret in the sonorous voice of the man they call muezzin.

At the time of his death, John Gardner, whose novels centered on life in small-town America, had just completed a totally untypical work: a new treatment of an ancient classic: The Epic of Gilgamesh.

On the flanks of Arabia two mountain ranges, standing high above the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, nourish species of plants with distant—and ancient—origins.

In the "Land of Kush" in the Sudan, the region called Meroe gave its name to a culture and a language—a lost language called "Meroitic" whose structure has defied the experts for 138 years.

On farms and in villages, in shops, shipyards and factories, today's Egyptians provide startling mirrors of Egypt's pharaonic past as captured by pharaonic artists.