Romance of Excavation

Before archaeology became a science, it was an obsession. David Masters captures the wild early days when treasure hunters and scholars alike descended on the deserts of the Middle East, armed with little more than shovels, conviction, and an unshakeable belief that the ancient world was still waiting to be found. This is the story of Schliemann digging for Troy with his hands, of explorers crawling through Egyptian tombs by candlelight, of the moment the bulls of Nineveh emerged from millennia of silence. Each chapter reads like an adventure novel: there are rivalries, near-death experiences, political intrigue, and the constant threat that a single wrong move could bury a discovery forever. Masters writes with the enthusiasm of someone who understands that every great excavation began as a mad dream. For anyone who has ever stood before ancient ruins and wondered what it must have felt like to be the first to see them in thousands of years, this book is a time machine.