Cyrus H. Gordon

“The competent archeologist can date pottery much as some of us can date cars or dresses of our own century.”

“I hope that the reader will not regard the contents of this book as an escape from the present world but rather as a key part of it.”

“For every mound excavated in the Near East, a hundred remain untouched. ...most of the excavated mounds have been dug only in small part.”

“The Sabbath, perhaps the most important labour legislation next to the abolition of slavery, is a Hebrew institution.”

“Babylonian mathematics and astronomy have left an indelible impression on our exact sciences. We still call some of the planets by their Babylonian names in translation.”

“Traders (like the Phoenicians) carried their methods as well as their wares to Europe by ship.”

“Mesopotamian merchants spread their commercial institutions far and wide, into Western Asia, Egypt and Europe. The ancient inhabitants of Babylonia used the word qaqqadum, 'head', in the sense of 'principal'... our English word 'capital' (via Latin caput [head]) reflects ancient Mesoptamian usage. ...our financial system, that reckons with interest on principal, harks back to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.”

“While Ugarit is revolutionizing the problem of Old Testament origins, the Dead Sea scrolls are doing the same for the New Testament. How fortunate is this generation to live at a time when the sources of our culture—sacred and profane—are illuminated in a brighter light of history than our forefathers imagined possible!”

“Prior to 1952, when M. Ventris first published his decipherment of the 'Linear B' tablets from Crete and Greece, showing that they were Greek, everyone assumed that Hebrew was recorded in writing before Greek. But now... we are reading Linear B Greek texts, written before the birth of Abraham (let alone before the date of any known Hebrew text).”

“That Homeric epic and the earliest Hebrew poetry were the results of long and rich developments should have been apparent to anyone who realizes that artistic perfection is never created ex nihilo.”