THE TREASURES OF TIME
By
Archaeology can be more than just a scholarly adventure, and this rewarding collection of pieces by famous practitioners in the field attests to just that. For at its best, The Treasures of Time makes that gritty occupation appear marvellously exciting, culturally upsetting, flamboyantly competitive and as strewn with as many fancy traps as any detective story. From Heinrich Schliemann's Greeks to Millar Burrows' Dead Sea Scrolls, from the Tell el-Amarna tablets to royal mummies and Tutankhamen's tomb --one after another these reconquest of lost civilizations parade themselves, till the most representative aspects of the Ancient Near East, matrix of all Western history, are exhaustively and quite delightfully explored. Editor Deuel always has an informative introduction to each of his selections, coupled with good documentation, 16 pages of illustrations, and a knack for placing everything in the proper modern perspective. Occasionally the Lone of the contributors varies, keynoting the different when written and the different nationalities. Sometimes a bit heavily Germanic, sometimes a touch stuffily Oxford, or methodically French, but never in the long run a bore. To our knowledge this is the first gathering of such eminent excavators within the confines of one book. The idea was a happy one all round and will win approval.