Return to Babylon: Travelers, Archaeologists, and Monuments in Mesopotamia

With all the continuing unpleasantries in Iraq, the author and publisher of this book take us back to much earlier times. Possibly as troubled as the present, but everyone involved then has been safely dead for decades. Fagan writes not so much about classical Mesopotamia, but of the last 2 hundred years, and the archeological efforts that have perspired. The latter is undoubtedly accurate, given the temperatures of the region and the lack of modern airconditioning to these outdoor diggers. One episode in the book relates how in 1816, a Briton named Buckingham amused himself by recording a typical summer day's temperatures. Starting at 44 degrees at dawn, 50 at 2pm and 45 at midnight! The temperate at 2pm is bad enough. But only cooling to 45 by midnight. That's amazing. As Buckingham related with British understatement, many people died of the heat. Strewth! Other famous names of this field abound in the narrative. Like Layard, Rawlinson and others. If archaeology is your field, Fagan fills in some details about these luminaries. He gives us an idea of what it was like to do pioneering work in such an old land, under difficult conditions.