Testaments of Time. The Search for Lost Manuscripts and Records

Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. hardcover. Very Good/Good. 9x6x1. Alfred A Knopf, 1965. Hardcover, xxxii, 590, xxi pages. Stated First Edition. Very good in good dust jacket. Red cloth covered boards with gold design on front and gold lettering on spine. Light bumping and scuffing to edges and corners of covers. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Dust jacket has several 1.5" or less chips and tears and light creasing along the edges. Light overall scuffing and and soiling to jacket as well. NOT price clipped. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Not Ex-library. No remainder marks. Illustrated with 16 pages of photographs, 186 drawings, and 5 maps. Typography, binding, and jacket design by Anita Karl [From jacket flaps] MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about the "dirt" archaeologists who discovered the ruins, graves, and artifacts of ancient civilizations in Egypt, the Near East, Central Asia, and Mexico. After them came the scholar-adventurers looking for the written records of these civilizations. They have made and are still making one dramatic find after another; but, with few exceptions, the stories of their searches have been available only in obscure learned journals. Just as Gods, Graves, and Scholars found a narrative technique to make "dirt" archaeology fascinating, so Testaments of Time opens for the general reader a panorama of the astonishing work being done to retrieve and restore ancient texts. And each success sheds new light on such subjects as daily life in ancient Egypt, early versions of the Bible, "lost" Greek classics, the spread of Buddhism, the American cultures the conquistadores did their best to destroy, and even on numerous frauds and forgeries. This, then, is a book about books, about the intrepid men who followed faint trails in strange places and discovered unknown or lost texts of vast importance, and then laboriously deciphered and interpreted them. The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls is only one of many in this very readable book that is, in large measure, a history of archaeology from a fresh point of view.