Michail Yu Treister

This book is the catalogue of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts' (Moscow) exhibition. The objects in the catalogue are generally thought to date to around the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. This work is generously filled with 275 illustrations, 272 in color most of which show incredible detail of the piece. Each piece is described in detail (basic catalogue entry + paragraphs of prose) with a bibliography referring to the piece and a bibliography of comparative material included for each. A detailed bibliography also appears in the back of the book.… (mer)

"Can you see anything?" "Yes, wonderful things!" Oh, sorry, that was a different archaeological expedition!

Heinrich Schliemann was a German businessman and amateur archaeologist, who was convinced that Homer's Iliad was not just a story, that there had been a Troy. And he found it, at Hissarlik, in Turkey. He made some extraordinary finds there, not least of which were many pieces of jewelry and other objects of gold, precious metals and precious and semi-precious stones.

Schliemann gave "Priam's Treasure" to the Berlin Museum, where they remained until the end of the Second World War, when they were hidden. The Soviets, on reaching Berlin, discovered, and realized the significance of, the treausre, and transported it to the Pushkin Museum, where it was rediscovered with the breakup of the USSR.

This is the exhibition catalog. And, even if the quotation above is from an Egyptologist, Schliemann might well have said of the objects here shown, "Yes, wonderful things."… (mer)