In the days before Hammurabi,
In the Tigris River valley,
There was a man,
Who had a daughter and wife,
And lived an ordinary life.

For him the crowds did not roar,
He never led soldiers into war,
He did not live in an opulent palace,
He was no king or mighty leader,
He simply was a country farmer.

His days were spent in the burning heat,
Pushing the plow and chopping the wheat,
At night, he came inside with a tired smile,
As his little daughter hugged him with bliss,
And his wife gave him a tender kiss.

The man spent every single day,
With the cattle and the hay,
The donkeys and crops,
The midges that bit, the bees that stung,
The dirt and dust that got in his lungs.

The man worked and worked as the years went by,
And then, like everyone, he died,
And was buried in a simple crypt,
Interred on one of the wooden lofts,
And then was left to rest without a second thought.

After three thousand years had passed,
Construction workers were digging a shaft,
But while one was shoveling,
He felt a small, hard object,
And he pulled it out in order to inspect it.

It was a single knuckle bone,
Buried in the dirt all alone,
It had belonged to that ancient man,
Though one would hardly know,
As the rest of him had turned to dust long, long ago.

The worker stared at that little piece,
Of the man which history had erased,
And never thinking it could be of use,
To archeologist or curator,
He threw it in a dump truck headed for the incinerator.