"James Herbert - Sepulchre" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert James)

 'And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle,
and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shall thou eat all the days of thy
life.' Genesis 3:14



THE SUMERIANS



Three thousand years before the birth of Christ, the first real moves towards civilisation emerged from
southern Mesopotamia, around the lower reaches of the Euphrates andTigris rivers. Because the land
was between two riversтАФSumerтАФthe people there were called Sumerians.

Their ethnic origins have never been explained.

This race of people made three important contributions towards our advancementтАФfour if you count the
establishment of firmly governed communities.

The first two were these: The measurement of time in hours, days and months; and astrology, the study
of the stars' influences, which eventually led to the science of astronomy.

But the third was most important of all, for the Sumerian high priests discovered a way of making man
immortal. Not by eternally binding his spirit to its earthly shell, but by preserving his knowledge. These
high priests devised the written word, and nothing invented since has had a greater effect on mankind's
progression.

Yet little is known of these people themselves.

By 2400 BC they had been swallowed up by surrounding, less enlightened tribes, who absorbed the
Sumerian culture and spread it to other lands, other nations.

So although their achievements survived, the Sumerians' early history did not. For the kings, the princes,
and the high priests destroyed or hid all such records.

Possibly they had good reason.




1 MORNING DUES



The man was smiling. Halloran was smiling and he shouldn't have been.

He should have been scaredтАФbowel-loosening scared. But he didn't appear to be. He seemed . . . he
seemed almost amused. Too calm for a sane man. As if the two Armalites and the Webley .38 aimed at
his chest were of no concern at all.