This book was assembled by a scholar of language and religion in order to bring together the best collection of the oldest stories known to man. They are older than anything in the Bible, or than Homer, or than the epic poems of India. They were recovered from the ruins of ancient cities and were originally written and told by the Assyrians and Babylonians of Mesopotamia, as well as the Hittites and Canaanites. There are 13 stories in all, some of which the reader will recognize, but others that are rarely or never seen anywhere else. Stories, in their order of appearance, are: The Adventures of Gilgamesh, The War of the Gods, Borrowed Plumes, The Lost Chance, How Toothache Came into the World, The God Who Disappeared, The Monster Made of Stone, The Snaring of the Dragon, Kessi and Huntsman, Master Good and Master Bad, The Heavenly Bow, The King Who Forgot, and The Story of Baal. The author was once the chief of the Hebraic section of the Library of Congress and the first to do a complete translation of the Dead Sea Scriptures in English. An invaluable bonus is that he shares his vast knowledge and expertise after each story with a commentary, including cross-cultural comparisons and a host of other interesting facts. For example, after The Story of Baal he tells us that the main story came from cuneiform tablets in Syria, but its' ending was discovered on a fragment of papyrus in Egypt. This book is essential for those researching the first cultures of mankind or the earliest stories of the gods.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

An Egyptian girl places the value of her own family over the Pharaoh's advances and promises of wealth in this picture book. Full color.

Heritage. Adaptation. Values. Flexibility. From the oldest pub in the world to the Liberty Bell and the origins of a nation, Established: Lessons from the World’s Oldest Companies tells the stories of twelve businesses with a combined age of almost 5,000 years. They’ve survived war, plague, rebellion, boom, bust, depression and strange twists of fate. But how and what can we learn from them. Spanning the local and the global, family businesses and household names such as Guinness and Wrigley, Established seeks to uncover the secrets behind the longevity of these twelve remarkable institutions. This is a book with points to make through stories told; all reinforced by photographs, many of them historic. Today the average lifespan of a business seems shorter than ever. The companies included here stand as living testaments to the value of rich, compelling stories in a world of quick-fix branding.

A Working History of Working Girls (and Guys) Have you ever wondered how Heidi Fleiss came to be the face of upscale prostitution or if Casanova really was the world's greatest lover? How about why Latin playboy Rubi Rubirosa got the nickname "The Ding Dong Daddy"? Anything but judgmental, Whore Stories sheds light on one of our more stigmatized icons: The Prostitute. Featuring the true stories of famous streetwalkers, call girls, rent boys, and go-go dancers, this book offers a revealing look at the men and women who have blazed the bawdy trail of prostitution since the dawn of time. While you may think that you know everything about this occupation, Whore Stories includes plenty of details and even celebrities, such as Maya Angelou and Bob Dylan, that will leave you in awe. From private schools and child preachers to mime fantasies and unfortunate amputations, this book uncovers the truth behind the world's oldest profession.

The Oldest Living Things in the World is an epic journey through time and space. Over the past decade, artist Rachel Sussman has researched, worked with biologists, and traveled the world to photograph continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. Spanning from Antarctica to Greenland, the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback, the result is a stunning and unique visual collection of ancient organisms unlike anything that has been created in the arts or sciences before, insightfully and accessibly narrated by Sussman along the way. Her work is both timeless and timely, and spans disciplines, continents, and millennia. It is underscored by an innate environmentalism and driven by Sussman’s relentless curiosity. She begins at “year zero,” and looks back from there, photographing the past in the present. These ancient individuals live on every continent and range from Greenlandic lichens that grow only one centimeter a century, to unique desert shrubs in Africa and South America, a predatory fungus in Oregon, Caribbean brain coral, to an 80,000-year-old colony of aspen in Utah. Sussman journeyed to Antarctica to photograph 5,500-year-old moss; Australia for stromatolites, primeval organisms tied to the oxygenation of the planet and the beginnings of life on Earth; and to Tasmania to capture a 43,600-year-old self-propagating shrub that’s the last individual of its kind. Her portraits reveal the living history of our planet—and what we stand to lose in the future. These ancient survivors have weathered millennia in some of the world’s most extreme environments, yet climate change and human encroachment have put many of them in danger. Two of her subjects have already met with untimely deaths by human hands. Alongside the photographs, Sussman relays fascinating – and sometimes harrowing – tales of her global adventures tracking down her subjects and shares insights from the scientists who research them. The oldest living things in the world are a record and celebration of the past, a call to action in the present, and a barometer of our future.

One man’s quest to find the oldest Bible scrolls in the world and uncover the story of the brilliant, doomed antiquarian accused of forging them. In the summer of 1883, Moses Wilhelm Shapira—archaeological treasure hunter and inveterate social climber—showed up unannounced in London claiming to have discovered the oldest copy of the Bible in the world. But before the museum could pony up his £1 million asking price for the scrolls—which discovery called into question the divine authorship of the scriptures—Shapira’s nemesis, the French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau, denounced the manuscripts, turning the public against him. Distraught over this humiliating public rebuke, Shapira fled to the Netherlands and committed suicide. Then, in 1947 the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Noting the similarities between these and Shapira’s scrolls, scholars made efforts to re-examine Shapira’s case, but it was too late: the primary piece of evidence, the parchment scrolls themselves had mysteriously vanished. Tigay, journalist and son of a renowned Biblical scholar, was galvanized by this peculiar story and this indecipherable man, and became determined to find the scrolls. He sets out on a quest that takes him to Australia, England, Holland, Germany where he meets Shapira’s still aggrieved descendants and Jerusalem where Shapira is still referred to in the present tense as a “Naughty boy”. He wades into museum storerooms, musty English attics, and even the Jordanian gorge where the scrolls were said to have been found all in a tireless effort to uncover the truth about the scrolls and about Shapira, himself. At once historical drama and modern-day mystery, The Lost Book of Moses explores the nineteenth-century disappearance of Shapira’s scrolls and Tigay's globetrotting hunt for the ancient manuscript. As it follows Tigay’s trail to the truth, the book brings to light a flamboyant, romantic, devious, and ultimately tragic personality in a story that vibrates with the suspense of a classic detective tale.