C. W. Ceram (1915–1972)

I first read this book in primary school, maybe sixth or seventh grade. I guess you could say it had an influence on me. I became an ancient history major.
I fell in love with archaeology reading this book, and even now, in my own novels, I rely on ancient history and myths for topics and allusions as great source material.
I still pull my rather yellowed-paged copy off my bookshelf and re-read it about every ten years. I can forgive the mistakes in archaeology; we always learn new information show more as time goes on. But Mr. Ceram did something that most of us on this website love to see: he sparked a kid's imagination with a book and that, in my opinion, is an almost holy thing. show less

C.W. Ceram visualized archeology as a wonderful combination of high adventure, romance, history and scholarship, and this book, a chronicle of man's search for his past, reads like a dramatic narrative. We travel with Heinrich Schliemann as, defying the ridicule of the learned world, he actually unearths the remains of the ancient city of Troy. We share the excitement of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter as they first glimpse the riches of Tutankhamen's tomb, of George Smith when he found the show more ancient clay tablets that contained the records of the Biblical Flood. We rediscover the ruined splendors of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient wold; of Chichen Itza, the abandoned pyramids of the Maya: and the legendary Labyrinth of tile Minotaur in Crete. Here is much of the history of civilization and the stories of the men who rediscovered it. show less

Interesting book! I learned some things I hadn't known, and details about things I had known. There were also some interesting sidelights on matters - Ceram's attitude towards the early history-hunters (not archaeologists, the ones who were just looking for neat stuff to take back to their countries) is interestingly in-between their own attitudes and how things are thought about today. I was wincing through his whole description of Schleimann's burrowing through the mound of Troy - while he show more looked for "interesting" things and gold, he was destroying huge amounts of data on the other cities and cultures that had inhabited the same place. The diggers in Babylon were a _little_ more careful, but only a little. And Ceram's views of Cortez and the other Spanish explorers/invaders of the New World were also much more approving than nowadays. Though he did point out some of the reasons for their insistence on "converting the heathens", and their inability to understand that they were dealing with another civilized people (not that that stopped Europeans from imposing their religion on others, anyway - Thirty Years War, anyone?). The level of detail varied considerably - Cortez and Carter we got specific events, with the early Egyptologists and explorers of Babylon and the associated cultures it's much more of an overview with occasional more-detailed descriptions of certain events. Overall, interesting, I'm glad I read it, and I doubt I'll ever want to reread. show less

Ceram does a wonder ful job bringing to life the early adventurers (not scientists) that kicked off archaeology as a science in the Old and New Worlds, and bringing to life the ancient societies of meso-america.