Lion Gate and Labyrinth: The World of Troy, Crete, and Mycenae

by Hans Baumann

Lion gate means Schliemann, labyrinth means Evans, and Baumann means responsible, readable archaeology; with the addition of thirty-two color plates throughout the text to the numerous black-and-white illustrations, this dual biography cum history cum archaeology cum mythology may be hard to classify but it will be impossible to ignore. Structurally independent, the sections on Schliemann and Evans complement and reinforce each other: Schliemann, the flamboyant virtuoso, is fascinating per se; Evans, the thorough scholar, lives primarily in the account of his excavations; the cultures they investigated are interrelated and their archaeological methods are sequential; together with their successors, they proved "that the myths are not inventions of the poets." Mr. Baumann is a perceptive observer: he notes that when Schliemann "saw how much time was lost by smoking, he forbade it," that Evans rode horseback, the "ideal way of traveling for anyone who wants to get to know a country." Like the author's earlier books, this is both thoroughly documented and refreshingly literate. - Kirkus Review

183 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

Reviews

[Oceana2602 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, I'm giving this five stars purely based on my childhood memories of this book. I couldn't tell you if it is really any good, but I LOVED it when I was a kid.

It made me want to be an archeologists, and reading it, I felt like I, myself, had discovered a whole new world. I was convinced that just knowing that name Schliemann made me the coolest person in the world.(OMG how did I ever survive highschool???)

(I also found a tea sock buried in the playground sand once, which - in hindsight - I'm pretty sure wasn't left there be ancient eqyptians, but I sure didn't know that back then.)