The Lost Kingdoms

The area between Egypt and India contains the world's oldest known civilisations: Uruk, Babylon, pharaonic Egypt. This area was also the birthplace for several of the world's cultures and religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The list of dates below shows this in more detail.

Ostensibly all these ancient civilisations died out long ago. Any long-dead king from ancient Babylon, or pharaoh, would not recognise much in the modern Middle East. The region's capital cities, its political entities and languages have all changed.

Yet religion often preserves, in its rituals and language, customs and habits that otherwise have become extinct. So it is with the surviving minority faiths of the Middle East - and with certain strands of Islam, too. The Mandaeans who lived for centuries in Iraq's southern marshes are the closest thing there is to descendants of ancient Babylon. The Zoroastrians of Iran keep alive the ideas and rituals of the ancient Persian Empire. The Druze, who practise a version of Islam, have preserved the ancient world's veneration for the Greek philosophers.

These traditions are under threat both from actual persecution and the spread of modernity and globalization. But these communities still do exist, as shown on the map above.