This handsome book takes the reader on a series of excursions to the cradle of European civilization, the eastern Mediterranean. Rediscovery of our cultural roots in the ancient world focuses here on five mane areas: Assyria and Persia; Greece; Rome; Byzantium; and Mediterranean Islam. In each the author evokes the interplay of art and religion, of ideas and politics, that characterized the life of the time. Accompanying this readable text is a magnificent assemnly of over 170 colour photographs - landscapes, ruins, mosaics, statues, friezes, artifacts of all kinds, illuminated pages - making these vists to the lands of the easter Mediterranean's ancient wpast a series of delightful journeys from which the reader will return with a new respect for those who preceded us...