Even in Lebanon, long a spearhead of westernization in the Middle East,  today's architects are reintroducing the themes of an earlier Arab period.

No one would think that Neil Armstrong, Simon Bolivar, Napoleon, Richard Nixon and Shaikh Mohamad Bin Hamad Alsharqi would have anything in common. But in the Arabian Gulf they do.

You fly to Arabia. You get through customs and see a taxi. You open your phrase-book and in your best Arabic you say..."!"

On the treasure-strewn plateau of Sakkara Walter Emery began his last dig. "Imhotep is here," he said, "and I will find him."

Onto the stage of a Beirut concert hall this winter came Cynthia Katchadourian, poised, pert, gifted—and only seven years old.

In his gracious Princeton home the father of Middle East studies in America looks back to Lebanon where, 87 years ago, it all began.