Dimensions
131 x 199 x 21mm
'Sitting by the ancient gate, on the north side of the city, I tried to imagine life unfolding in Motya . . . So many of the everyday details were still buried under my feet, but the ground that had been excavated had gradually unfolded its secrets, revealing the story of an ancient city and a lost civilisation . . .'
Once a city teeming with over fifteen thousand inhabitants, Motya - just across the Mediterranean from Carthage - was destroyed by the Greeks in 397 BC after an extended siege. Its inhabitants were massacred, its buildings left to rot. By the late nineteenth century those buildings had long since disappeared under the sands, until the English amateur archaeologist Joseph Whitaker bought the island and began digging.
The result was a stream of discoveries - buildings, pottery and statuary - and this small island is now the major source of our knowledge of the Phoenicians. This book is the magical story of that discovery.
