And Terah took Abram . . . and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees.' The city Abraham left behind him - a city with good claims to being the oldest in the world - was rediscovered in 1854 by the then British Consul at Basra. But not until the end of World War I was serious excavation undertaken there. The results were so encouraging that four years later a joint British-American expedition, directed by the author of this book, worked on the site. The story of their discoveries made during years of work and covering the successive cities which were built on the site from days far beyond the flood until Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, is here told, and the daily life of the peoples who lived through more than four millennia beside the Euphrates recreated in word and picture.