Like Kipling in literature, time and fashion have passed him by. Once, though, Edmund Dulac's lush colors and romantic visions filled England's books - and children's dreams.

Four years ago, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia opened the King Faisal Specialist Hospital - a showcase of 21st-century medicine, a model for future health care and a monument to the man who planned it.

To the Brooklyn Museum last year came 100,000 people eager to see the arts of ancient Nubia, now, for the first time, emerging from the giant shadow of ancient Egypt.

To compare observations and photographs made from space with the actual terrain, a party of geologists traveled to the edge of the Great Sand Sea - to Egypt's Siwa Oasis, once a resort of kings.

In the West it's the 20th century - A.D. But in the world of Islam, where the calendar started on a different date, the 14th century - A. H. - is just drawing to a close.