The recovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh in the mid-nineteenth century could best be described as disorienting.

In the twelfth century, the time of Jihadis and Crusaders, there was a church built on the island of Sicily. It was constructed for the Norman king, Roger II. The artwork on the interior of the Cappella Palatina was unparalleled in the Mediterranean of its time, in ingenuity of form and symbolism and in its melding of styles, including Islamic and Byzantine.