Impressive as this prehistoric achievement is even today, by 2000 B.C. the peoples occupying the Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers had been erecting multichambered temples on huge platforms for at least a millennium. In the fertile valley of the Nile in Egypt, the great stone pyramids of the pharaohs were already five hundred or more years old when Stonehenge was erected. We now turn to those civilizations, with their written records and historical personalities.