Mesopotamia - The Cradle of Civilization

Mesopotamia is Greek for "the land between two rivers", as it is located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now known as Iraq. Clay tablets have been unearthed here which were written in Cuniform, the oldest known written language. These stories are being compared with some of the most ancient scientific systems we know of on this page.

It is certain that Iraq contains many more ancient treasures than the ones we have already discovered. They could be key to understanding so much about our history, culture and our origins.

“The Descent of Ishtar into the Underworld through the Ancient Gates of a Glycerol Channel”, Giclee Iris Print, 2000. $395 ($215 for unframed prints)

Ishtar was a goddess in the times when dreams were just as important as the waking reality; prophetic and real. Her story is revealed to us on clay tablets, the earliest version from around 1,600 B.C, unearthed in modern day Iraq. Written in cuniform, the oldest known written language, her ancient story presented itself to me during my search for an analogy between a most ancient biological gate and a mythological counterpart. This biological gate is found in membrane proteins that allow only water or glycerol to cross the membrane and enter a cell, and has been conserved for over four billion years.

A small handful of amino acids compose this gatekeeping system, and every species which contains a protein for conducting water or glycerol into a cell also contains this gateway package of amino acids. The first structure to be determined for this kind of channel was for a protein called the GLPF receptor (glycerol facilitator protein). This protein is represented here, where the pillars of the channel in the painting mimic the arrangement of the seven helices which compose the GLPF receptor, with two of the helices stripped away to reveal the inside of the channel. The stairway portrays the connections between the helices that allow specific molecules to enter the channel, and the ancient gate is shown in its amino acid structure on the stairway.

“Myths from Mesopotamia, Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh and Others”, Stephanie Dalley, 1989, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-283589-0. and “Structure of a glycerol-conducting channel and the basis for its selectivity”, Science, 2000 Oct 20;290(5491):481-6 . Fu D, Libson A, Miercke LJ, Weitzman C, Nollert P, Krucinski J, Stroud RM.