This wasn't quite what I was expecting (though by this point I've forgotten what exactly I was expecting) - it is a collection of Mary Beard's book reviews for various magazines and journals, over a period of about 20 years.  (Mary Beard is a distinguished classicist; I have read her excellent Fires of Pompeii, which I recommend, and have SPQR waiting.) 

It therefore covers a wide range of subjects, from Arthur Evans' excavations at Knossos to Greco-Roman joke books, what 19th-century British tourists expected to see or need in Greece and at Pompeii, and Roman-style fortune telling (popular questions included "will I get sold?" and "have I been poisoned?" as well as the eternal "is my wife cheating on me?"). 

I liked some chapters better than others (as is inevitable with such a collection), but they were all interesting.  It made good bedtime reading, as no chapter was terribly long, and they were on a wide variety of subjects. 

Also, some of the books that were reviewed looked very interesting.  (The Dictionary of British Classicists probably excluded.)

This is an interesting book but I wouldn't exactly call it a light and easy read. Okay, it took me only three (maybe four and a half) days to read it but that was namely because I was speed reading it. Basically this is your typical example of a dry academic text. It was not that it was a bad book, nor was the topic boring, it was just that it is generally full of academic information, namely the archaeological explorations in modern day Turkey.

Okay, I have read other books along that line, and you can easily pick up copies of such books travelling through the sites in Greece (and I suspect you can also pick up similar books in Turkey). However, it appears that this book was mainly written for archaeologists to continue the research into the pre-classical civilsations that existed in Turkey.

Look, some of his descriptions of the regions, and the archaeological sites within them are extraordinary, however his main focus is on the sites as opposed to the civilisation that lies behind them. He says as much in his introduction, and this book is actually a companion book to another book that details the civilisations that these ruins represent.

Don't get me wrong, I love exploring old ruins, and having a book like this is quite handy. When I was in Greece I picked up similar books, though they were much more up to date with glossy pictures of the various sites. A part of me wished I had picked up a few more because most of the famous sites (and even some of the not so famous sites, such as Tyrins) have copies of these books at the kiosk. Even going over to Italy you will find similar books on the various towns, however when I got to Florence I was quite disappointed that there was no glossy type book that actually dealt with the city and its history (they did have books, but not what I wanted).

The other interesting thing about the book was learning about the ruins themselves, and even though I was speed reading it I could almost picture the ruins in my head. The problem with these ruins though is their location (you could have thought the Hitties would have built their civilisation in a more accessible and stable part of the world – but then again in those days the most logical place to build a city was on top of a mountain). They are out somewhere in the middle of Turkey and I am not all that sure of what the access to these sites are like. At least with Ephesus you can take a day trip from one of the Greek Islands and you can also visit Troy on a day trip from Istanbul. Athens, well, that's right in the middle of Athens (though Delphi and Mycenae are a little more of a headache to get to, though since they are popular sites, at least there are tour buses that go there).

I suspect that Vermes is probably the foremost expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls since it seems that every book about it is either written, or edited, by him, but then that is simply an observation that I have made. For those not familiar with these ancient documents they were found hidden in a cave by the Dead Sea in about 1947 by a young shepherd and they have been classified as one of the most significant archaeological finds of the last century. Basically they are a collection of scrolls written by a Roman era Jewish sect known as the Essenes and among the many non-biblical scrolls they also contain a complete copy of the book of Isaiah and pretty much sections of every other book of the Old Testament, and most importantly, some of these scroll date back to at least 100 BC. In fact, other than the Babylonian tablets and the Egyptian wall writings, they are probably some of the oldest texts that we have.

The Essenes were an isolationist Jewish sect that had become disgusted with both sides of Jewish politics, being those collaborating with Rome and those rebelling against Rome, and took the third option: leave society and go an establish your own, pure, society in the middle of the desert. These scrolls actually contain details of their cleansing rituals as well as admission requirements for new members. In fact, they appear to be very cultish, effectively rejecting the world of the day and having pretty much nothing to do with it. They would be very similar to some of the isolationist Christian cults that we see around the place, though probably closer to say the likes of Branch Davidian than some of the cults that actually abide by the rules of society, while living separate from them (remember, the whole Branch Davidian fiasco really came down to the fact that they we so isolationist that they refused to pay taxes, which is why the FBI came down so hard of them - they were not terrorists like the Jewish Zealots were).

These scrolls also give us an insight into the ways that the Old Testament books were written, in that we have a number of scrolls which contain merely outlines of the books rather than the complete text itself, as well as commentaries on various aspects of these books. The Essenes were very traditional Jews, so the scrolls really only contain literature that relates to Jewish Literature than to any of the foreign influences that we find in the Gnostic Gospels. The Jewish mind set of the day was generally to reject anything that was not Jewish (unless you were a collaborator and then all bets were off).

These scrolls are pre-Christian, and in fact pre-Christ, so despite suggestions to the contrary, there are no New Testament documents among the collection. However, we do have glimpses of the idea of the Messiah in these texts and what the Essenes at least were looking for. However, it appears that they were not looking for one, but two, separate Messiahs, one being a teacher and another being a ruler. Many of the fundamentalist Jews of the day were expecting a warrior King, along the line of David and Joshua, rather than a king of Wisdom, along the line of Moses and Solomon. This also comes out amongst the scrolls, particularly with references to the Kittim, which we understand as being the Romans.

Remember, things were different in those days in that it was a lot easier to isolate oneself from society that it is now. Despite the vast tracks of emptiness that cover the world, it is difficult for us Westerners to live a self sufficient lifestyle; the government will always intrude. Now I do not necessarily consider modern government to be a bad thing, but I am not all in favour of the current practices either. In a way I consider that governments are a necessary evil. It differed for the Jews than to me though because I am a citizen of my nation-state, whereas the Jews were an occupied people. Whatever freedoms they had were always dictated to them by the Roman legate.