Discover the riveting true story of the 18th-century expedition that left only one survivor in this lost classic of adventure and travel writing—with 33 drawings and maps. Arabia Felix is the spellbinding true story of a scientific expedition gone disastrously awry. On a winter morning in 1761 6 men leave Copenhagen by sea—a botanist, a philologist, an astronomer, a doctor, an artist, and their manservant—an ill-assorted band of men who dislike and distrust one another from the start. These are the members of the Danish expedition to Arabia Felix, as Yemen was then known, the first organized foray into a corner of the world unknown to Europeans. The expedition made its way to Turkey and Egypt, by which time its members were already actively seeking to undercut and even kill one another, before disappearing into the harsh desert that was their destination. Nearly 7 years later a single survivor returned to Denmark to find himself forgotten and all the specimens that had been sent back ruined by neglect. Based on diaries, notebooks, and sketches that lay unread in Danish archives until the twentieth century, Arabia Felix is a tale of intellectual rivalry and a comedy of very bad manners, as well as an utterly absorbing adventure.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

"In Arabia Felix from the Time of the Queen of Sheba, Jean-Francois Breton provides us with a detailed description of this remote civilization, the uniqueness of the region's geography and climate, and the major events that shaped its history. Calling on the resources of modern archeological discoveries, he offers insights into the Sabeans' daily life, their agriculture and skill in irrigation, their customs and religion, their modes of commerce, and their relations with neighboring civilizations."--BOOK JACKET.

Since its publication in Italian in 1996, this has become the classic introduction to the history and archaeology of southern Arabia. Now in English, it make all the evidence available to a new audience. The first part of the book reviews what is known about the region from early visitors to the area from the 15th century onwards and from the resea

Reprint of the original, first published in 1859.

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a short work of uncertain date and unknown authorship, written in very difficult Greek. It is concerned with the coasts of the Red Sea and -Indian Ocean and may be described as a combined trade directory and Admiralty Handbook, giving sailing directions and information about navigational hazards, harbours, imports and exports. It is of great value for the study of the commerce of the Roman Empire and the early history of East Africa, South Arabia and India. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1980.

This is the first modern edition and first English translation of one of the earliest and most important works in the history of geography, the third-century Geographika of Eratosthenes. In this work, which for the first time described the geography of the entire inhabited world as it was then known, Eratosthenes of Kyrene (ca. 285-205 BC) invented the discipline of geography as we understand it. A polymath who served as librarian at Alexandria and tutor to the future King Ptolemy IV, Eratosthenes created the terminology of geography, probably including the word geographia itself. Building on his previous work, in which he determined the size and shape of the earth, Eratosthenes in the Geographika created a grid of parallels and meridians that linked together every place in the world: for the first time one could figure out the relationship and distance between remote localities, such as northwest Africa and the Caspian Sea. The Geographika also identified some four hundred places, more than ever before, from Thoule (probably Iceland) to Taprobane (Sri Lanka), and from well down the coast of Africa to Central Asia. This is the first collation of the more than 150 fragments of the Geographika in more than a century. Each fragment is accompanied by an English translation, a summary, and commentary. Duane W. Roller provides a rich background, including a history of the text and its reception, a biography of Eratosthenes, and a comprehensive account of ancient Greek geographical thought and of Eratosthenes' pioneering contribution to it. This edition also includes maps that show all of the known places named in the Geographika, appendixes, a bibliography, and indexes.