This graphic novel is meant to be a portrait of the Nuragic civilization which, at the time the novel is set, in 1222 BC, was the most advanced one in the western Mediterranean. Nuragic people did not leave any writings or, at least, they did not come to us. Nevertheless, they erected towers up to twenty meters tall, with tholos domes and helicoidal staircases inside their cyclopean stone walls. Cyclopean stone walls that just bear a close resemblance to the ones of the Greek cities of Tiryns and Mycenae, the cradle of the Mycenaean civilization, coeval with the Nuragic one. Nuragic architecture had something sensational, and something extraordinary was also its spread in the island of silver veins. But what is the ancient link between Lydia and Sardinia? Let us just think about the name of the Lydian capital, Sardis, and how, in the first volume of “The Histories”, Herodotus already wrote about the famine which struck that region and its grievous consequences during the reign of Atys… In this volume Fish, a Nuragic boy of humble origins, makes his first appearance. Because of a tragic event he witnesses, he is suddenly catapulted into a venture seemingly bigger than him: the search of a mysterious treasure brought to Sardinia by some Lydian settlers. But unexpected qualities will be shown by the boy faced with the inevitable adversities and he will discover that his search is heading towards another treasure that all of us have close at hand, but that often we lose sight of… ourselves!

The theft of the numerous archaeological artifacts which comprise the so-called Lydian Hoard (Karun Hazineleri or Karun Treasure, in Turkish) is legendary. So too is its discovery, the lawsuit which embroiled the Republic of Turkey and the all powerful Metropolitan Museum of Art for almost six years, and the surprising problems encountered after the treasure had been repatriated to Turkey. With the possible exception of the exploration of the tomb of Tutankhamon, no other archaeological discovery can compete with the Lydian Hoard for its mystique and intrigue. No other archaeological discovery has influenced and destroyed as many lives as the Lydian Hoard. Chasing The Golden Hoard follows the lives of a Turkish family living on the outskirts of the modern town of Usak in southwestern Turkey as they accidentally discover an unplundered Sixth Century B.C. tomb, dating from the reign of Lydian king Croesus (Karun, in Turkish).

A journey across four continents to the heart of the conflict over who should own the great works of ancient art Why are the Elgin Marbles in London and not on the Acropolis? Why do there seem to be as many mummies in France as there are in Egypt? Why are so many Etruscan masterworks in America? For the past two centuries, the West has been plundering the treasures of the ancient world to fill its great museums, but in recent years, the countries where ancient civilizations originated have begun to push back, taking museums to court, prosecuting curators, and threatening to force the return of these priceless objects. Where do these treasures rightly belong? Sharon Waxman, a former culture reporter for The New York Times and a longtime foreign correspondent, brings us inside this high-stakes conflict, examining the implications for the preservation of the objects themselves and for how we understand our shared cultural heritage. Her journey takes readers from the great cities of Europe and America to Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and Italy, as these countries face down the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She also introduces a cast of determined and implacable characters whose battles may strip these museums of some of their most cherished treasures. For readers who are fascinated by antiquity, who love to frequent museums, and who believe in the value of cultural exchange, Loot opens a new window on an enduring conflict.

The author of Hidden History offers a fascinating tour through centuries of buried riches, stolen artifacts, and other true tales of treasure. The allure of treasure has captivated people for centuries. But is it purely a desire for wealth that draws us to tales of hidden riches, or is it also the romantic appeal of uncovering lost ancient artifacts? The stories behind the loss and recovery of ancient treasures often read like historical suspense fiction. In Ancient Treasures, readers discover the true histories of lost hoards, looted archaeological artifacts, and sunken treasures, including: The Sevso Treasure, a hoard of large silver vessels from the late Roman Empire—estimated to be worth $200 million—looted in the 1970s and sold on the black market. The Amber Room, a chamber decoration of amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors, stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and brought to the castle at Königsberg in Russia, from which it disappeared. The fabulous wealth of Roman and Viking hoards buried in the ground for safekeeping, only to be unearthed centuries later by humble metal detectorists. The wrecks of the Spanish treasure fleets, whose New World plunder has been the target of elaborate salvage attempts by modern treasure hunters

In voluntary exile in Athens, Marcus Corvinus receives a letter from his antiquarian stepfather Priscus, who has learned that the 4¬? ft solid gold statue of a female baker, one of a large number of valuable gifts to the Delphic Oracle by the 6th century BC King Croesus of Lydia, has reappeared and is being offered for sale in Athens on the black market. Corvinus agrees to be his agent and to try and buy it. But, as a result, he finds himself caught up in the world of organised crime, as well as in a deadly struggle of interests with other, less scrupulous, collectors.

In Couched in Death, Elizabeth P. Baughan offers the first comprehensive look at the earliest funeral couches in the ancient Mediterranean world. These sixth- and fifth-century BCE klinai from Asia Minor were inspired by specialty luxury furnishings developed in Archaic Greece for reclining at elite symposia. It was in Anatolia, however—in the dynastic cultures of Lydia and Phrygia and their neighbors—that klinai first gained prominence not as banquet furniture but as burial receptacles. For tombs, wooden couches were replaced by more permanent media cut from bedrock, carved from marble or limestone, or even cast in bronze. The rich archaeological findings of funerary klinai throughout Asia Minor raise intriguing questions about the social and symbolic meanings of this burial furniture. Why did Anatolian elites want to bury their dead on replicas of Greek furniture? Do the klinai found in Anatolian tombs represent Persian influence after the conquest of Anatolia, as previous scholarship has suggested? Bringing a diverse body of understudied and unpublished material together for the first time, Baughan investigates the origins and cultural significance of kline-burial and charts the stylistic development and distribution of funerary klinai throughout Anatolia. She contends that funeral couch burials and banqueter representations in funerary art helped construct hybridized Anatolian-Persian identities in Achaemenid Anatolia, and she reassesses the origins of the custom of the reclining banquet itself, a defining feature of ancient Mediterranean civilizations. Baughan explores the relationships of Anatolian funeral couches with similar traditions in Etruria and Macedonia as well as their "afterlife" in the modern era, and her study also includes a comprehensive survey of evidence for ancient klinai in general, based on analysis of more than three hundred klinai representations on Greek vases as well as archaeological and textual sources.

Reproduction of the original.