"OLD SAD SOUNDS..."

New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 988, 25 July 1958, Page 13

"OLD SAD SOUNDS..."

VANISHED CITIES, by Herman and Georg Schreiber; Weidenfeld and Nicholson, English price 25/-. T is difficult to conceive of a book of archaeology which fails to interest. Vanished Cities has the additional advantage of supplementing the science with folk tales and a very readable book results. The treatment is romantic and, because of the wealth of materials, much too episodic, yet the vividness carries one along. The description of the overwhelming of Pompeii, for example, has been well told frequently, but the Schreibers contrive to give the account a remarkable freshness. In this, no doubt, they are helped by the extraordinary

photograph of a plaster cast of the body of a man in the throes of being smothered by the ashes. The illustrations are splendid. Indeed magnificent illustrations appear to be the rule in books of archaeology. Of course Vanished Cities fairly invites comparison with Lissner’s The Living Past, reviewed by me a few months ago. This is much the slighter book. Where Lissner traces civilisations, the Schreibers describe cities, the more romantically buried (by the sea, sand, earthquake, encroaching forest) the better. And what cities! "Their names are old sad sounds in men’s ears." Sodom (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued from previous page)

and Sybaris; Ys and Tiryns and Tatessus; Angkor Vat and Atlantis; Carthage and Shang; Puteoli and Palmyra; Zimbabwe. No one can hear of them without emotion. It would be difficult to put the book down in the middle of any one account. Readers may also note that the dancing girl from Mohenjo-Daro on page 321 is the same attractive little minx who graces the spine of Lissner’s book. Clearly she appealed to both authors and, even allowing that she is nearly 3000 years old, I can understand that.

J.D.

McD.