Dear TIME-Reader:

AS the latest Mediterranean crisis, resulting from Egypt's seizure of the Suez Canal, approaches a climax, TIME's editors this week give you a long look at this part of the world in the context of history. In eight pages of four-color maps, they use a geographic medium to provide a concise review of more than 3,000 years of history, covering the rise and fall of ancient empires modern colonialism around the rim of the Mediterranean.

Conventional historical maps usually show only one point in time, but TIME's R. M. Chapin Jr. managed to encompass broad spans of time in his maps and yet keep them easily readable. His Roman map, for instance, ranges from the time of the Punic Wars through Constantine, and his Islam map from Mohammed to the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

To supply editors and Cartographer Chapin with historical dates and data, Researcher Cecilia Dempster, a University of Edinburgh-trained geographer who worked for the American Geographical Society before she joined TIME in 1953, crammed for three months. "My biggest problems," she said, "were to reconcile the different viewpoints of historians and to locate ancient boundaries. The Romans, bless them, very carefully recorded theirs; the Moslems didn't bother."

This week, with TIME's biggest map project to date in print, Researcher Dempster is in Rio, attending the 18th International Geographical Union.

THE portrait of Duke Ellington is the first TIME cover by one of the West's most distinguished artists, New Mexico's Peter Hurd. A LIFE correspondent during World War II, Hurd has painted on all five continents, but the people and scenes he likes best to portray are the ranch folk, the sun-blazed desert and the bare mountains near his New Mexican ranch (TIME color page, Mar. 3, 1952). His precise tempera paintings of the U.S. Southwest and its people are owned by such leading museums as New York City's Metropolitan, Kansas City's William Rockhill Nelson and the National Gallery in Edinburgh. For Hurd, a classical-music fan, the Ellington assignment was his first brush with the world of jazz. He caught up with the Duke in San Francisco and spent the first two days trying to corner the elusive but affable musician. "Hi, Hurd. You're the portrait man. Well, fine. Excuse me, I have to see that cat over there," Ellington would say and fade away. But once the portrait was started, Ellington liked to pose as he held court for his innumerable friends in the artist's hotel room.

Said Hurd: "It was an interesting assignment. As they say here, 'I wouldn't have taken for the experience!' ':

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

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