American philologist Edward Robinson (1794 1863) is considered a founding figure in the field of biblical geography and archaeology. In 1838 he explored Palestine with Eli Smith (1801 57), a Yale graduate and Protestant missionary, and co-author of Missionary Researches in Armenia (also reissued in this series). Smith had settled in Beirut and was proficient in Arabic. The authors succeeded in identifying many biblical locations, and the original edition of their book, structured as a travel journal, was published in 1841. It was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society the...

American philologist Edward Robinson (1794 1863) is considered a founding figure in the field of biblical geography and archaeology. In 1838 he explored Palestine with Eli Smith (1801 57), a Yale graduate and Protestant missionary, and co-author of Missionary Researches in Armenia (also reissued in this series). Smith had settled in Beirut and was proficient in Arabic. The authors succeeded in identifying many biblical locations, and the original edition of their book, structured as a travel journal, was published in 1841. It was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society the...

American philologist Edward Robinson (1794 1863) is considered a founding figure in the field of biblical geography and archaeology. In 1838 he explored Palestine with Eli Smith (1801 57), a Yale graduate and Protestant missionary, and co-author of Missionary Researches in Armenia (also reissued in this series). Smith had settled in Beirut and was proficient in Arabic. The authors succeeded in identifying many biblical locations, and the original edition of their book, structured as a travel journal, was published in 1841. It was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society the...

Born in Scotland, James Fergusson (1808 86) spent ten years as an indigo planter in India before embarking upon a second career as an architectural historian. Despite his lack of formal training, he became an expert in the field of Indian architecture. The topography and temples of ancient Jerusalem also fascinated him. This 1865 collection of two lectures summarises his controversial topographical and architectural argument that the location where Constantine erected the original Holy Sepulchre was the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. Fergusson then describes the Temple in its...

In 1863, the English architect John Turtle Wood (1821 90) resigned from a railway development project in western Turkey to begin his search at Ephesus for the Temple of Artemis, lost from view since the middle ages. In the first part of this well-illustrated 1877 publication, Wood describes the city and the initial excavations carried out with support from the British Museum. This survey of various structures concludes with Wood's work at the great theatre, where he found the Greek inscription that helped direct him to the correct location of the temple in 1869. Part II focuses on the...

The traveller and archaeologist Sir Charles Fellows (1799 1860) made several trips through Asia Minor. This work is an account of the first of these, recording his careful observations of the lands he travelled through. On this trip, he found ancient cities which were unknown to Europeans at that time, including Xanthos, the capital of ancient Lycia, dating from the fifth century BCE. Fellows' narrative brings the journey to life with vivid descriptions of the people and places he encountered, and detailed sketches of notable antiquities and inscriptions. First published in 1839, this work...

The antiquarian William J. Thoms (1803 85) is probably best remembered today for founding the journal Notes and Queries and for having coined the term 'folk lore'. He undertook the translation of this work by the Danish archaeologist Jens Worsaae (1821 85) because he felt (as Worsaae says himself) that 'the primeval national antiquities of the British islands have never hitherto been brought into a scientific arrangement'. Believing that this had arisen partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing between some of the many different cultures in Britain's past, Thoms also felt that...

The son of a Turin lawyer, Bartolomeo Gastaldi (1818 79) initially followed in his father's footsteps but then abandoned the law to pursue his passion for geology and palaeontology. Later one of the founders of the Italian Alpine Club, Gastaldi was especially interested in the geology and glaciology of the Alps in his native Piedmont. The mineral gastaldite is named after him. This work, first published in Italian in 1862, is reissued here in the 1865 English translation prepared by Charles Harcourt Chambers (1826 76) for the Anthropological Society of London. Its importance lies in the...

The American writer and diplomat John Lloyd Stephens (1805 52) was effectively the founder of Mesoamerican archaeology, through his rediscovery of the Mayan civilization (his two-volume Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan is also reissued in this series). But before that, having qualified and practised as a lawyer in New York, he went on a two-year journey through Egypt and the Near East, publishing an account of his experiences in 1837 (under the name of George Stephens): this reissue is of the expanded 1838 edition. The work was extremely popular, possibly because,...

The American writer and diplomat John Lloyd Stephens (1805 52) was effectively the founder of Mesoamerican archaeology, through his rediscovery of the Mayan civilization (his two-volume Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan is also reissued in this series). But before that, having qualified and practised as a lawyer in New York, he went on a two-year journey through Egypt and the Near East, publishing an account of his experiences in 1837 (under the name of George Stephens): this reissue is of the expanded 1838 edition. The work was extremely popular, possibly because,...