Gods, Graves and Scholars by C.W. Ceram

The Story of Archeology

Gods, Graves and Scholars by C.W. Ceram is a popularization of archeology, an engagingly written account of that science for the uninitiated, for the rest of us. Cream tells us by way of introduction in the book’s Foreword, “My book was written without scholarly pretentions. My aim was to portray the dramatic qualities, the human side.” It is, in short, a work of non-fictional adventure.

I must stand up and be counted among those who fell in love with archeology after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in the 1980s. If I had been able to follow up the pulp-style fictional adventures of Indiana Jones with Gods, Graves and Scholars I may have been hopelessly smitten for life. Instead, I had to wait until my freshman year of college when I took my one and only archeology class. All I really remember was learning how some bits of broken dishes proved that a certain group of Scandinavian immigrants lived in a certain area of Upper Michigan. Not exactly swashbuckling.

But Gods, Graves and Scholars is, and it’s not even fiction. It’s an exciting account of the way some of the most important discoveries came about:

Archeology, I found, comprehended all manner of excitement and achievement. Adventure is coupled with bookish toil. Romantic excursions go hand in hand with scholarly self-discipline and moderation. Explorations among the ruins of the remote past have carried curious men all over the face of the earth.

These stories are filled with compulsive scholars, obsessive dreamers, tireless adventurers, code-breakers, murderers, sadistic one-eyed villains, and an entire town full of tomb-robbers. Ceram takes the reader by the hand through accounts of J.J. Winkleman’s creation of a systematic approach to the new science of archeology in the mid-18th century before he was murdered; Heinrich Schliemann’s discovery of the city of Troy (and its treasure) by following his favorite fairy tale; Jean-Francois Champollion’s obsession with the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics; the breathless climax of Howard Carter’s entrance into Tutankhamen’s tomb; and John Lloyd Stephens’s securing for study the ruins of the Mayan city of Copan by purchasing the whole thing for fifty dollars.

At the risk of sounding like an infomercial host, I’ll just say, “and there’s much, much more.” The reader rides along to discover statues and steles, pyramids and tombs, crumbled towers and buried treasures, to so many places where, “that piquant combination of research and adventure, of scientific success and treasure-hunting, of that romantic éclat which comes when the excavator’s spade suddenly strikes a find of great material and intellectual value.” We watch over the shoulders of archeologists and other scholars as they struggle “to make dried-up wellsprings bubble forth again, to make the forgotten known again, and cause to flow once more that historic stream in which we are all encompassed.”

This book is, in a word, fascinating! I’m still a little out of breath from taking this armchair stay-cation with Ceram, who wrote, “In truth no science is more adventurous than archeology, if adventure is thought of as a mixture of spirit and deed.” After having read his book, and when I consider that it was originally published in 1949 (in German), several years before Sputnik gave us new frontiers rather than the remains of forgotten ones, I have no choice but to agree.

Coming soon: My thoughts on Words I Wish I Wrote by Robert Fulghum

A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now