Word: earliest
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...that was bad enough. Iraq's cultural history stretches back an astonishing 10,000 years, to the very dawn of civilization. The first cities, the earliest known legal system and the first written language all arose there--in the ancient Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. And artifacts from that entire, mind-boggling sweep of time--hundreds of thousands of objects that had survived wars and successive invasions by Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, the Mongols and other marauders long forgotten--might now be missing or destroyed...
...from private and mosque libraries throughout Iraq, are spiritual blows as well. Between them, the two libraries made Baghdad the largest, most valuable repository of Arabic books outside Cairo's al-Azhar Library. The National Library's prized collection included royal court records and thousands of documents from the earliest Islamic periods, along with thousands of books (many handwritten, some of them one of a kind) on Islamic law and practice. In the Awqaf Library, attached to the Ministry of Religious Endowments, was a priceless collection of handwritten Korans (some said to be over 1,000 years old), religious manuscripts...
Among the missing objects is a solid gold harp from the ancient city of Ur, a carved bird dating from 8000 B.C.E., and priceless Arabic texts and cuneiform tablets. For scholars with interests ranging from the earliest signs of civilization to the art and literature of the medieval Muslim world, the loss of such a collection is a disaster...
Schaffer had not taken an art class since eighth grade, and says this was the first time he ever seriously attempted to express himself visually. His earliest work was primarily scribbles with pen on pieces of paper...
...first things we did was the change the schedule, raise the bar and go out with an aggressive style of baseball,” he says, explaining his earliest actions as coach. “I think the kids that were here just had to believe in themselves a little bit—they were already a pretty good group. I think there may have been a mindset that needed to be changed, but there was a lot of talent and a lot of ability...