It is by now commonplace that the civilizations of the Middle East are oldest known to human history. They go back thousands of years, much older than the civilizations of India and China, not to speak of other upstart places. It is also interesting, though now often forgotten, that the ancient civilizations of the Middle East were almost totally obliterated and forgotten by their own people as well as by others. Their monuments were defaced or destroyed, their languages forgotten, their scripts forgotten, their history forgotten and even their identities forgotten.
All that was known about them came from one single source, and that is Israel, the only component of the ancient Middle East to have retained their identity, their memory, their language and their books. For a very long time, up to comparatively modern times, with rare exceptions all that was known about the ancient Middle East--the Babylonians, the Egyptians and the rest--was what the Jewish tradiiton has preserved.