CHAPTER 1

Rediscovering a

Lost World

I

magine you have boarded a time machine that takes you 3,
years into the past and deposits you in central Turkey, in a
huge rock and mudbrick city surrounded by walls stretching
as far as you can see. Everyone stares curiously at you.‘Water!’you
say, as you feel yourfirst blast of intense dry summer heat. You are
immediately understood. Someone hurries off and returns with a
bowl brimming with liquid.‘Watar,’he says as he hands it to you.

ASTRANGE WORLD REVEALED

Let’s move forward to the year 1834AD, to the 28th day of the
month of July to be precise. On the site of our time-travel visit, a
Frenchman called Charles Texier now stands, staring uncompre-
hendingly at the desolate ruin before him. For that is all the city
now is. An ancient Celtic settlement called Tavium is supposed to
lie thereabouts, and Texier has been sent by the French Ministry of
Culture tofind it. But Tavium dates to the period of Roman rule in
Turkey. Texier has no idea what the city where he now stands is.
But he realises that it is very much older and very much larger than
Tavium could have been. The impressive buildings and immense
walls of the city at the height of its glory have now completely
disappeared. But the walls’stone foundations and those of the
buildings within it still testify to the city’s former grandeur. As do
several of its still-surviving monumental gates. One in particular