34. India

Between the mountains and the sea,

A large ruby grew out of the Indus River Valley.

Precious material

Flowed in flooding waters

Down mountains

Collecting in the mud and muck of monsoonal runoff.

Their lives were better

Despite the turmoil of the floods.

Their gods smiled down on them

They grew in their radiance.

Bigger than Egypt and Sumer

It fed on merchants and agriculture.

Thriving to build cities

For a thousand years.

Slowly, their gods became stronger

Taking root in the fertile Indus River mud.

They were fed by visionaries

Chanting through Vedic mantras and stories

Ganesh, Indira and all the others.

Then, when the civilization was too weak to go on,

Invaders came from the North.

To change the old order

The gods matured

Through war and bloodshed.

Chiefdom was traded for Oligarchies and hierarchy.

The caste was born.

33. Israel

For forty days and forty nights
People wandered the deserts
As the hand of God shaped his newest jewel.
Through miracles
He polished it,
Through faith
He ground it
Slowly shaping his new treasure
Until it was perfect.
Moses, the child of the reeds
Washed the stone carefully
Pulling it out of the flooding Nile.
Even when they whined and moaned
And harsh tribulations caused them to lose faith,
He continued under the guidance of his master.
He brought laws to the great gem
They only thanked him with a golden cow.
Angered at the transgression the law was broken
A new jewel had to be made.
For another generation they wandered the desert
As the material was reused.
Slowly, a new jeweler came.
Yahweh’s Salvation.
Directing the Israelites to Canaan
Where they took the land
In accordance to a curse by the arc builder.
Kings came and went
Slowly polishing the stone
Making it shine with faith
David came to claim the throne for God
While Solomon built His house
But Solomon wasn’t careful.
He dropped it.
It shattered into two.

31. Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia,

A jewel between the rivers,

Shining through the dust and mud of the fertile plain.

The people were at the mercy of the gods Tigris and Euphrates.

They were cranky and unpredictable.

When they felt generous, they’d flood the land

The crops would be destroyed.

If they felt stingy, the land would dry out.

The crops would be destroyed.

In order to appease their gods

Ziggurats were built.

Temple towers

With stairs going up to the heavens.

“Dear gods,” the man said.

“I survived to the next year; the appointed time passed.”

“I turn around, but it is bad, very bad;”

“My ill luck increases and I cannot find what is right.”

With the rivers Tigris and Euphrates

Even the diviner with his divination could not make a prediction.

Since Sumerian gods didn’t create a better life it was up to them.

The gods didn’t care.

To them, man was to work and slave in the fields

Sumer begot Akkad which begot Assyria and finally Babylon.

The land begot Israel from father Abraham in Ur.

Babylon’s great kingdom and their great king

Saw to it that laws were written

So that order can be restored.

An eye for an eye,

A tooth for a tooth.

If a man has knocked out the eye of a patrician,

His eye shall be knocked out.

If a patrician has knocked out the tooth of a man that is his equal,

His tooth shall be knocked out.

And so it was,

Order was restored

In the land where gods didn’t care.

30. Jewels of the Ancient World

As time went on

Cities expanded.

Growing into glorious and prosperous jewels.

Civilization and culture provided heat and pressure

The ancient stone began to melt.

Gods provided water

That delivered the precious elements

Into the fertile grass laden valleys.

Slowly the years churned the raw materials

More elements were delivered

The cycles of the expanding and contracting waters

Left their mark on the land and her people.

The jewels grew

Evolving over time

With each deposit.

With each little bit of culture.

With the fusing of each raw material

They matured

Slowly growing to form such powerful beauty

That glinted and shimmered

Under the hot sun.

6.The Early Earth

The sun was pleased by the work of the architect

But something seemed to be missing.

Something unique.

Something no one else had before.

“Form for me a jewel,” the Sun said one day.

“It must outshine the best of my collection.”

“Make it blue,”

“A deep, dark, ocean blue.”

“Make it cool and refreshing.”

“Swirl it around with reds, browns and greens”

“Add a few little patches of white.”

“Make it a piece of art.”

“It will be my prized possession.”

The architect did as he was told.

The new gem grew out of the womb of nebula.

As it did it burned.

The jewel was red and molten in the forge of the Solar System

Continually bombarded by small chunks

Shaping the metal like hammers over fire.

The great forge master smiled at his work.

He showed his white teeth among his long, scraggly, smoke-colored beard.

He held the formless mass over the fire and rhythmically hammered away.

Making the molten ball bigger.

Hot sparks leaped up off the surface

Splashing down once again.

This continued over many millennia.

The forge master perfected his craft.

Hot gasses steamed out.

Slowly, pieces of black land came up

Crusting over the red molten liquid.