Grown, they look like dragonflies, but at the larval stage the ant-lions —squat, tough, and as fierce as the real thing—not only feed on ants, but dig pits in which to trap them.

It began in Ohio with Mrs. Trollope's "bizarre bazaar": the revival, in the New World, of the architecture and architectural forms of ancient Egypt.

Outside Cairo, in a small museum, a unique collection of sculpture in mud by young superbly talented children whose "hidden power" one man believed, has been handed down from ancient Egypt.

"Nostalgic but vibrant, sad but defiant... capable of jubilation... mystic... fiery..'.' is the way one writer described the most famous singer in the Arab world: Fayrouz, known to many as "The Soul of Lebanon"

Dispassionate and empirical, systematic and scientific, two English doctors left an objective and enthusiastic account of life in 18th-century Aleppo.