Ancient World Bookshop: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece.

Bookshop — The Ancient World

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The Cradle — Mesopotamia

The earliest civilisations and empires of the western world were rooted between the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Empires of the Plain / Lesley Adkins

The story of Henry Rawlinson, the Victorian soldier and adventurer. His obsession with cuneiform and his analysis of inscriptions copied at no little risk from the sheer rock face at Bisitun provided the key to the ancient scripts and languages. Decipherment of the libraries of clay tablets at Nineveh and Babylon revealed the actual existence of places mentioned in the Old Testament.

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Nineveh and Its Remains / Austen Henry Layard

Layard’s account of his discovery and excavation of Assyrian sites, including the city of Nineveh, in modern Iraq.

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Ur of the Chaldees / Leonard Woolley

The centre of the ancient Sumerian civilisation and the biblical home of the patriarch Abraham.

Excavations were begun by the British Museum in 1919. Leonard Wooley was director of the work through the 1920s and 1930s.

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The Wonder of Egypt

The annual inundation of the Nile was the constant that stimulated thousands of years of almost uninterrupted development.

The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt / Ian Shaw

From the Stone Age to the Roman conquest, this is a unique, substantial and comprehensive work on the history of life and death in the valley of the Nile, and on its art, architecture and literature.

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Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom / Cyril Aldred
From prehistoric times to 2000 BCE, the development of one of the earliest civilisations.

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Egypt of the Pharaohs / A H Gardiner

From the predynastic era to the Greco-Roman period. This work is highly regarded and has been frequently referred to by successive generations of writers.

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The Tomb of Tutankamen / Howard Carter

‘Wonderful things!’ Howard Carter’s account of his excavation and his description of the best known tomb of the Egyptian pharaohs.

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Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs / Zahi Hawass

A very recent account of the tomb of Tutankhamun and its treasure, together with the historical context of the 18th dynasty.

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Secrets from the Sand: My Search for Egypt's Past / Zahi Hawass

The life in archaeology of Egypt’s Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and Director of the Giza Pyramids excavations. Accounts of modern restorations and conservation planning are mingled with personal accounts of excavations and absorbing tales of tomb raiders.

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Valley of the Golden Mummies / Zahi Hawass

The excavations at Bahariya, under the direction of Dr. Hawass, are revealing an enormous necropolis covering an area of two square miles and estimated to contain up to 10,000 mummies. The first discoveries were made in 1999 with the excavation of 105 mummies, lavishly gilded from head to chest. Bahariya has already yielded the largest number of perfectly preserved mummies found so far in Egypt.

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The Splendour of Greece

Greece was the most potent influence on the culture and civilisation of Rome and post-Roman Europe. The Classical period produced the first western historians: Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon.

The Greeks / HDF Kitto
Authoritative and highly regarded work on the origins and flowering of the Greek speaking world.

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The Find of a Lifetime / Sylvia L Horowitz

The biography of the curator of the Oxford Ashmolean Museum who discovered and excavated the ‘Palace of Minos’ at Knossos. The ancient civilisation of Crete had been mentioned in Homer and in the Greek myth of Theseus and the labyrinth. Sir Arthur Evans’s ‘restorations’ at Knossos have been the subject of much controversy, but Knossos and the Palace of Phaistos remain amongst the most enthralling sites for archaeological enthusiasts.

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The Minoans / J Lesley Fitton

A recent examination of current knowledge of the Bronze Age civilisation of Crete.

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The Man Who Deciphered Linear B / Andrew Robinson
A recent account of the life and untimely death of Michael Ventris. Many academics initially resisted this brilliant amateur’s conclusion that the archaic Minoan script was an early form of Greek.

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Atlantis: The Truth Behind the Legend / Galanopoulos & Bacon
Links the eruption of Thera/Santorini with the destruction of the Minoan empire and Plato’s description of Atlantis. The basic premise of the authors, a vulcanologist and an archaeological journalist, has gained wider acceptance since the 1960s.

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The End of Atlantis / J V Luce
More on the Thera eruption and its impact on the Eastern Mediterranean. Less speculative than Galanopoulos and Bacon and more firmly slanted towards the archaeology.

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The Mycenaeans / Lord William Taylour

As the Minoan thalassocracy began to crumble, and well before the rise of Classical Greece, the Mycenaeans created a trading empire and, according to Homer, assumed leadership of the Greeks at Troy. At their citadel on the Peloponnesus they developed distinctive styles of architecture and art. The Lion Gate and beehive tombs are exemplars, as is the gold burial mask discovered by Schliemann: ‘I have looked upon the face of Agamemnon!’ Not quite, but the artefact is impressive nonetheless.

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The World of Odysseus / M I Finley
A cultural exploration of the Homeric world with especial emphasis on the role of gift exchange and other reciprocal social customs.

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Troy and Its Remains / Heinrich Schliemann

‘Dust hath closed Helen’s eye…’ - and Schliemann’s amateur excavations at Troy caused considerable damage to the archaeology of the site. But his conviction that the key to the discovery of ancient Illium could be found in Homer is one of the great romantic stories of archaeology; and his talent for publicity and self-promotion was greatly responsible for the later 19th century fascination with archaeology and the ancient world.

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The Greeks in India / George Woodcock
Between the 6th century BCE and the 5th century CE, Greek traders, military adventurers and artists had a little-understood influence on the sub-continent.

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Histories / Herodotus
The first European historian. The theme of the Graeco-Persian wars is the point of departure for many entertaining diversions. The account of Thermopylae is classic: ‘Stranger, go tell the Spartans that we lie here obedient to their command.’

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Marathon / Alan Lloyd

‘The Story of Civilisations on Collision Course.’ Athens rose to pre-eminence in the Hellenistic world after this defeat of the Persian land army and the subsequent defeat of the Persian fleet at Salamis (q.v.)

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Salamis / Barry Strauss

The culminating sea battle of the twenty-year-war between the Persian Empire and the Greeks.

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The Peloponnesian War / Thucidydes
After Herodotus, Thucidydes was the earliest historian and the first to attempt an objective approach, based on first hand experience of the war between Athens and Sparta. Includes Pericles’ funeral oration over the Athenian dead.

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Anabasis / Xenophon

Xenophon led the retreat of the Ten Thousand from imminent disaster in Mesopotamia to the shore of the Black Sea. Documents the delight of the Greek army on reaching the coast after a dry and weary trek: ‘Thalassa, Thalassa!’ (The sea, the sea!)

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Alexander the Great / Robin Lane Fox
Many of the insights into the life and campaigns of Alexander were new at the time of publication and still make for good reading. From Macedon to Egypt to Persia and the Indus — the conquest of the known world.

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General

Gods, Graves & Scholars / C W Ceram
Arguably still the best general introduction to the development of archaeology. A readable record of eccentrics and classic digs.

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Voices in Stone / Ernst Doblhofer
Fascinating account of the decipherment of ancient texts and languages and the scholars, often amateurs, who opened the door on the remote past.

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