ISIS has devastated irreplaceable cultural treasures with its iconoclasm. Michael Sommer builds a bridge between the present and antiquity: he skilfully tells and interprets the eventful history of a unique cultural area that continues to shape our identity to this day.

Almost every week we witness how the IS destroys ancient heritage. At the same time, it is destroying the order that the victorious powers created after the First World War. But history only quotes itself. IS is only doing what anti-imperial actors have always done: Overthrow order and erase memory. Will the self-proclaimed caliphs of IS also rise to become the masters of a new empire? And what will the world lose with the erasure of key places of remembrance such as Palmyra and Hatra? Michael Sommer shows how the people between the Mediterranean and the Tigris established themselves in the great empires by appropriating their religion, art, architecture and law. In this way, a cosmopolitan milieu of relative tolerance flourished. But power also has a dark side: Empires are always creatures of chaos and violence that create the conditions for their existence in the first place.

Published in 2016 by Klett-Cotta-Verlag. 216 pages. ISBN: 978-3-608-94977-3.

Click here for the book presentation. The media are also interested in Syria.