Classic National Geograohic classic photo driven volume of worldwide remnants of the past. ( )

A splendid, large format volume with accounts of lost cities. Replete with full-spread photographs, paintings, details of museum pieces, and location shots. A great example of the lavish volumes on history, geography, nature published by organisations like National Geographic, that took advantage of century-end advances in the technology of photography and printing. Includes chapters on Sumeria, cities of Solomon, Pompeii, Kush, Angkor, Hittites, Sri Lanka. ( )

i find buddhist relics overwhelming. why have 1 statue when 10,000 are possible- literally? but as everyone says the photos are great. ( )

CITIES. How does a "city" get "lost"? Viking Jorvik at York in Great Britain, the legacies of the Khumer in SE Asia, Ur in Mesapotamia, the Hittites.

SUMER. Most of the Ziggurats (temple mounds) and pits have yet to be re-discovered in Iraq. We do have some access to the "tower of babel" honoring Inanna, in Warka. Inscribed clay tablets 5000 years old, and the stone supplicants, in frozen wide-eyed rapture [34]. Cuneiform was deciphered only a century ago [39].

Modern marsh arabs living on reed islands [38, 52, 55]. Compare, the pre-Biblical flood in Gilgamesh where an unhappy God sought to exterminate all but one who loaded his family and animals on a reed boat.

Origin of writing - Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Univ of Texas, studied the uses of clay, and drew a theory from the tokens unearthed in the region. For 4000 years the tokens remain the same, then suddenly, around 3500 BC, a key invention coincides with emerging city-states: the clay envelope. Traders would seal tokens inside to record a transaction. But to remind themselves what was inside, they began impressing the token on the outside of the envelope. This abstract shape lettered the clay, and became literacy.[45]

Half the scribes who signed tablets had Semitic names [59]. From 2500 BC, the Jews and Arabs were not just nomads. (Cf Sargon of Akkad, Hammurabi of Babylon). The earliest laws found [65], are associated with Innana worship in Sumer's Nippur.

Biblical history is compared. No evidence of Solomon's peerless wealth and wisdom [88]. Specifically, no place to put his SEVEN HUNDRED WIVES AND THREE HUNDRED CONCUBINES {1st Kings}--which numbers the Bible condemns only for their vigorous pagan worship to which willingly Solomon succumbed.

POMPEII. Flourishing in the Campanian of southern Italy, and dominated by educated [120] businessWOMEN [108a], its flowers, onions, and wine were praised in ancient texts [104]. In 79 AD, Vesuvius exploded, killing 1/5 of the 10-12,000 inhabitants under 15 feet of debris, and becoming dormant for 1200 years. Its name was forgotten [104a]. In 1763 it was rediscovered. Now, a place to Google-earth, the digging continues.

It is the Pompeian Basilica which influenced the design of large Christian churches [108a]. The peristyle garden was the most popular place--and where the women were in charge--in the open Roman house [109a, 115]. The pervasive symbol was the decorated phallus [118a] or dancing faun [122]. Unlike the Forum, with its Greek influence, the Amphitheatre [139], and public bath, represent architecture indigenous to Italy [118]. The Lupanar [brothel] was in the most densely populated section [138], with Art on the ceilings.

KUSH. In Northern Sudan, in the Butana region, dating back to 900 BC and not fully excavated, lies a large temple complex which is "unparalleled in the world", and which no one has explained [147]--why it was built, its purposes. The inscriptions are un-deciphered.

After 500 years under Egyptian occupation, Kush won its independence, and its capital at Napata became a center of Amun worship [149a]. During an Egyptian civil war, and ostensibly to "restore" Amun worship, the first great king, Kashta invaded Egypt, and his son Piye (Piankhy) completed the conquest of Egypt, founding the XXV Dynasty of the black pharoahs, lasting for 70 years. When the Assyrians struck into Egypt, the Kushite god-kings retreated to Meroe. In the sixth century BC, a new civilization took form from that center [149]. The Meroites mastered iron-working before anyone else [153]. Their burial pyramids number more than any others in the world [154, we might call a cult of the dead 158]. And then they disappear from history [171].

ANGKOR/ KHMER. The ancient Khmer of Cambodia flourished in a riparian jungle delta with a City at Angkor, between the 9th and 14th centuries. Research came to an abrupt end in 1975 [184 Pol Pot's Killing Fields] with "Kampuchea". The Vietnamese communists occupied Angkor.

The Khumer took the best of new ideas from India and China, and built Angkor. Nothing in India compares with it [193]. The buildings are huge, delicately carved stone. The altars are lingam's over which they poured melted ghee [196]. The best rice and fishery in the world [196b, 201]. Only the temples were stone, all the other palaces and buildings were wood[199]. King Jayavarman VII, "builder" of the Bayon/Angkor Thom (Great Temple) actively fostered the Buddhist faith in 1180's. He rose to power in his 50's, when the kingdom was in shambles from leadership by sycophant, and by attack by neighboring Champa which he then sacked and looted [207].

HITTITES. The famous Treaty of Rea-mashesha mai Amana, between the Egyptians and the "Hatti" (Hittites) was negotiated 3250 years ago. [Suppiluliuma is given short shrift here.] The Hittites flourished between the 17th and 12 centuries BC, centured at Hattusa, and then they disappeared from History. Most of what is known is less than 35 years old -- since Kurt Bittel's work at Hattusa.[225]

The Great Castle (Turkish "Buyukkale") was a masterwork of military architecture, had its own temple, and two large libraries with thousands of cuneiform tablets. The site is called Alacahoyuk [245] and the tombs have yielded a vast hoard of gold and silver artifacts.

These people may have plundered Babylon and terrified the Jews and Egyptians, but they loved The Law. Finally, we have no explanation for their disappearance -- although "the Sea Peoples" are implicated [!! 238b].

SRI LANKA. Mahinda, Buddhist missionary son of Emporer Asoka in India, arrived circa 250 BC [252]. When King Devanampiya Tissa converted, culture blossomed. Vegetation still smothers most of the ruins of Anuradhapura and the long-abandoned cities of Polonnaruwa and Sigiriya which rivaled the cities of any in the ancient world [251]. ( )

EXCELLENT BOOK. I WISH I HAD GOT IT OUT AND READ IT YEARS AGO. IT WAS GIVEN TO DAD FOR CHRISTMAS AND SAT ON A SHELF FOR A LONG TIME. THE PICTURES, OF COURSE, ARE AWESOME AND IT TAKES YOU TO UNEXPECTED PLACES LIKE SRI LANKA, POMPEII, AND THE ROYAL CITIES OF KING SOLOMON. IT CREATES AN AMAZING JOURNEY FOR THE READER WITH AMPLE PHOTOGRAPHY AND LOTS OF INFORMATION THAT IS VERY FASCINATING AS WELL AS EDUCATIONAL. ( )