Customer Reviews

Ancient Turkey: A Traveller's History

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was one of our best preparations for our tour of Turkey ( cascoly.com/tours.htm) It covers an enormous period from prehistoric times to the Christian era, yet manages to set everything in perspective. Lloyd traces the exploits of the Hittite kings, the confrontation of Croesus and the Persian king Cyrus, the conquests of Alexander the Great, and Mithridates' epic resistance against Rome. Plus, it addresses the history as a traveler will see it. Archaeological landmarks discussed include the discovery of the Alaca Huyuk tombs, the attempts to establish the location of Troy, and the opening of the Tomb of Midas. Lloyd shows how each successive culture has left its mark on an astonishing variety of sites, from the shrines of Catal Huyuk to the temples of Ephesus and the churches founded by St. Paul. In our month long trip we only managed to visit about half the sites that he discusses, although we saw many of them represented in museums. But that just means we'll still be using this book on our next trip. My only wish would be that he could follow with a book covering the last 2000 years of Turkish history

I read this book prior to and during a recent trip to Turkey and Greece. Although I have studied this area in art history classes, I was blown away by the breadth and scope of what remains today of ancient civilazxations in this part of the world! This book enabled me to undertand the importance of what is currently still in existence, but what had been there before. Ephesus, following this book, was an a truly incredible experience. This book was exaraordinarily readable as well, not overy text book like. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who desires to know more about Turkey and its very imoprtant place in ancient history as the croos roads of many incredible civilizations.

Seton Lloyd is known to American public by his commentaries on Public Television documentaries about Turkey. He is a well informed scholar, and trustworthy. Therefore I was offended by the Amsterdam, Holland reviewer who, trying to push his own political agenda, tries to kick dirt on Seton Lloyd. Seton Lloyd writes what is Turkey most famous for: its Greco-Roman, ancient Hittite, and Mesopotanian heritage. Most Americans I know want to go Turkey to see the earliest churches of Christianity, likewise many Europeans enjoy discovering their Christian-Greco-Roman heritage as well. There are a lot of Armenian relics in Turkey, a country with the history of many peoples and cultures. Visitors to those regions know where they are and they go to visit them as well.

I picked up this book in preparation for a class trip to Turkey to look at architecture and landscape. I have found it to be exhaustive in details pertaining to archeological discoveries and sequence. I wish that it would leave off some of these details, and spend a little more time painting the bigger picture. The book reads as if you are listening to a one-sided conversation with a very specialized and opinionated professor. It is almost casual in tone, and spends too much time and emotion on issues that don't really aid understanding of the history of Turkey. Having said that, if you can struggle through the dense parts, and keep refering back to the maps, you can get a pretty good idea of the progression and significance of events.

I bought this book as background reading for an upcoming trip to Turkey. It is a comprehensive and well-written overview of ancient history, from the Hittites up through the beginnings of Christianity in what is now Turkey, with context relating to the influence of adjacent areas as needed. It puts things in context and provides maps to help locate cultures and events geographically. I would recommend it for anyone interested in the subject, or reading up for a visit.

The book gives a good introduction to the history of Anatolia up to the time of the early Christian Church. It can seem at times to be a little dry or shallow in its coverage. While it is on some sense a historical account, the author is an archeologist, and the narrative heavily leans on this direction. This is not necesarily bad since I read the book as a prelude to my trip to Turkey, but one should be aware of it before buying the book. All in all, I would recommend buying it.

Found this book to be a great help in putting the many pieces of History of Turkey and Anatolia over the past 4,500 years. Not a dry academic text, but written for the reader to move through the history of places and peoples. Not a stirring account but very comprehensive. Read this with several books on Turkish ancient history in prep for a 3 week tour of the Western Turkish Ancient sites. This proved a good companion to the Blue Guide of Turkey.

Very detailed summary of human activity in Anatolia since the Stone Age. Written by a British archeologist whose specialty is Mesopotamia and Anatolia. The accompanying maps could be better or at least better indexed.

I bought this before travelling to Turkey, looking for an accessible guide to the fascinating multi-layered history behind the cities and sights. That is not this book. It is not arranged by city or region: instead, the chapters are chronological through the history of the whole area. It is not accessible: the writing is both dense with unexplained historian-only asides and references, and also really dry and stilted.

So: It is not a history for travellers, and doesn't live up to its title! Maybe the title means that the author travelled to Turkey, and wrote a history?

We're travelling with friends to Turkey, and one of them said "I'm buying a Turkish history book so I'll be smart about where we're going"--turns out he found the same one on Amazon. We both were looking for some history for our travels, and this sounded perfect from the title and the positive reviews. But he also thought it was "terrible, unreadable, practically turned me off of history."

If you are making the same Amazon book search that my friend and I did, and looking for the same thing, DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE WE DID!

Here's a much better alternative. The Cadogan Guide to Turkey is a general travel book that includes rich historical background to all the cities and individual sights described. This has been my absolutely favorite reference, with wonderful depth of vivid commentary.

Apologies to genuine readers who think politics has no place in this column.But I could not help add a very simple fact. If only this Dutch fellow who has spent years as an archeologist visited Istanbul to find Armenian churches all over the place as the Armenian community who were left intact in Istanbul after the so-called genocide (!). Oh, if it was Asia Minor where he could not find anything left Armenian, he only needed to as far as Erzurum, Erzincan, Kars (eastern provinces of Turkey) to see mass graves of Turks still being uncovered today as the legacy of Armenian gangs.