Our Oriental Heritage (Volume 1): Will Durant opens his massive survey of civilized history with a sweeping look at the Orient: the Egyptians, who perfected monumental architecture, medicine and mummification the Babylonians, who developed astronomy and physics the Judeans, who preserved their culture in the immortal books of the Old Testament and the Persians, who ruled the largest empire in recorded history before Rome.

So the Durants embarked on an encyclopedic survey of all civilization, ancient and modern, Occidental and Oriental. This is the classic reference on world history, recognized as the most comprehensive general history ever written, the result of four decades of work by Will and Ariel Durant - a set that The New York Times called 'a splendid, broad panorama of hereditary culture in words and images that the layman can fully understand.' This series began as an effort to write a history on the nineteenth century, an undertaking that Will Durant realized could only be understood in terms of what had come before.

The life of greece will durant