the book of lost cities JOHN STATHATOSthe book of lost cities‘So much then forthe accounts ofthe Persians and Phoenicians, on whose truth falsity have no inten: tion of passing judgement. prefer ta rely on my own knowledge, on the strength of which wil proceed, with my istry, teling the story a | go along of small ces no less than of great. Mst of those which ‘were once grea are small today; and those which in my own lifetime have growa to greatness, were small {enough nthe old days. I makes no odds whether the cies I shall ite of are great or small for inthis, ‘world none remain prosperous fo ongthe book of lost cities JOHN STATHATOS essays by Yves Astioux Joan Fowrcuscera expose elag‘Yes AsRIoux Lost ano Founo: (On re EristeMoLocical Poumies ‘oF PucracRarus ‘Archaeological curiosity and poltco-miltary Interests have long gone hand in hand, oth in the Middle East and elsewhere. Any umber of episodes come o mind as ane laoks a the photogra hs in on Stathats’ Book of Los ities, wth their fragments of architecture emerging from rocks and sand. When, for example, Napoleon Bonaparte led an expedition to Egypt in 1798, sup posedly tee the natives oftheir oppressive rulers and carry to ‘hem the benefits of modem civilisation, the result was a military Fasc However, the generaltookwwith hima large team ofexperts who caried outa meticulous study ofaland then almost unknown to Europeans; when thelr findings were published, some 3000 ilstrations wer aid before the publi, giving birth to the fashion for things Egyptian and to Orientalist fantasies which popular calture (especialy fn) suggests are far from dead, even today. "Nor has archaeological exploration inthe Near and Middle East lost its power to arouse passions. In the mia-seventes, the ds. covery of clay tablets inthe ancient city of Eba fuelled unfounded rumours of close correspondences with Biblical tests, provoking virulent attacks on Syria, which found itself unjustly accused of| suppressinginformation which was in fact icttous, Contemporaryphotography cannot hope to approach archaeological themes without coming up against the simultaneously conflicting and complicit strategies of knowledge and conquest ‘ntimations of archaeological and imperialist history Gncluding commercial expansionism) abound in the tests accompanying Stathatos' photographs. The fist function ofthese writings isto ‘detity the sites photographed: Dzedala, Azzanathkona, Lien, etc. However, the citation of such names wil nt sutfice;afaty complex process of authentication is necessary. lathe fst place, the cities in question being “lost” ~ Le. their precse tocation having long remained unknown, although thelr existence was recorded in ancient texts ~ the question of identification works against the grain ofthe customary logic of captions, which sto make mute images declare thei identity. Here its the photo: ‘sraphic “evidence” which "proves" that these mythical names. 4o (ordi) indeed refer to Something very real However, ifthe Image thus acts to confirm the veracity ofthe text it is equally ‘rue thatthe cation of scholarly sources is necessary to animate the less eloquent photographs. to sign, nthe conventional ‘manner, thatthe camera has indeed captured something of note ‘Susan Sontag has famously decried photographs as “artificial ‘uins," suggesting that their phenomenological status as traces ‘of 3 past moment induces a passive relation to reality. This may indeed be the attitude cosily fostered by the family snapshot album of, more dramatically, by press photography and video footage, nat to forget the numerous artistic contexts in which we have learnt to discern some sort of metaphorical or generalised significance as accruing to the photographic image. in contrast John Stathatos” photographs of ll but invisible ruin, or of ene matic architectural features seemingly ost inthe mide of now here, suggest that whenever one enters the realm of root ext and photograph will mutually re-ontextualiz each other, in an altogether more complex manner. This true even in academia, ‘On an epistemological level, The Book of Lost Cities confems. the thesis of commentators lke Bruno Latour who, in a “phota- philosophical” meeitation on a scientific expedition to a very iferent part ofthe word (the Amazon, argues that reference is defined, not bya statements designating something whichitfaces alsone-to-one across the gap between word and world, but by the internal consistency of a chain of operations in which words and images frequently swap places, the one acting asthe necessary supplement ofthe other. Ione approaches The Book of Lost Ces with a scientific ~ or forensic ~ urge to discover proof ofthe existence ofthe archaic "referents" it documents, one quick finds these slipping between ‘one’s fingers, Not only has it already been intimated that itis ficult to pin down the actual sites. Certain of the ites evoked here sit problematicaly astride two cultures ~ the Greek and the siti failing tha, they at east estily to reglonalconflts which determined thir very existence (oth ther origin and their end) IF simply identitying the remains of such places involves sifting tough the notoriously unvlable annals of military history fur ther defining their identity oten implies negotiating a position in apaltic.theologcal conflict. The calm ofthe photographs barely hides a fundamentally confctual referent, which parallels the relationships of power which the images themselves have to negotiate ona pragmatic level. Furthermore tothe extent that one defines the context of The Book (of Lost ties in terms of scientific or Forensic proof it becomes necessary to check ts textual references: questions of itational accuracy andinterpretative qualtyhave tobe asked and answered for the consistency ofthe referential chain to be demonstated ‘Simultaneous the ely oftheimages has tobe verified. Such, however, is the authority with which the photographic image is vested thatthe latter necessity will appear less immediate than the former. On the one hand, for example, reference toan ancient Greek author called Stephanus has, in the context of a city ‘pamed Oaedala, an itigunglyJoycean ring that is felictousy ‘strengthened by the rhyme between the name Stephanus and that ofthe modern scholar Cutis, 50 that one is led to wonder wether 3 nomliteral reading of Stathatos' critical apparatus might nat be pertinent ‘On the other hand, one tends tobe lulled into perhaps unjustified «confidence bythe photographic images as such. Here, manifest ‘content parallels overt pragmatic status. Not since the ephemeral but influential cult of ruins instigated in the late eighteenth ce:tury have artists relly given cause to be suspected of wilfully constructing architectural fragments withthe aim of passing them offs genuine. The modern cult of monuments has ferent co: notations, which provide the immediate context fr Stthatos’ work. The painstaking textual excavations and the careful docu ‘mentation of anonymous ruinsin The Book of Lost Cities imply a wil 1 redeem the remote past, this effect being reinforced by a ‘mode of presentation which both renders the images themselves ‘monumental and transfigures them by bathing them night. Finally itis perhaps the very conflation of effects of authority which most provokes one to hesitate. Thus itis sinifiant that the format of Stathatos' light boxes i sufficiently reminiscent of atelevsion screen to call 1 mind the most recent views of desert, landscapes to have received wide publicity, even though they showed runs altogether less august in character. These were the views of agin the wake of Operation Desert Storm. No previous military campaign had ever produced such carefully managed images: who can say with confidence which were eal and which virtual? The Book of Los Cities acknowledges a debt to Borges. Nowever, associated withthe Borgesianervition ofits texts, the ‘undramaticverisimiltude ofits photographs outstep the bounds ‘of erudite Iteracy. These are not fables of iterary epistemology butobject lessons nthe art of negotiating one's way through the minefield of glabal communications, atthe onset ofthe age of multi-media, ‘Ts say reputed i es ton, rl tes S958), amonopaph edie by lon otters aconpay the 7h encores“sPenserous canmania snore “oRMUZ) Geannae ARKIOTIS Tamms scathingcomment onthe lostKingdom of Ormuz and its predecessor state is familar: “of all he Seleucid salrapies, Camania Is the least known; it seems to have no history Like most bon mots, this one needs fo be taken cum sgrano sats Theres, atleast no quarcel over the strapys general ‘eographical location: west of Gedrosa, along the coast south of the Persian Desert, drminating the Straights of Ormuz along their northern shore. Aleander the Greats admiral, Nearchos, mentions itin passing in his memoirs, while Onescitus writes of mines, the sgolé-bearing river Amani, and ofthe headhunters infesting the hinterland, The exact boundaries ate in some doubt, for Stabo's conflation of eaer sources gives the distance from Cape lask to Macae (Res Mussendan) in Arabia as Yone day’ voyage” ~ unlikely even under the most auspicious of circumstances, ‘he invaluable Pliny adds to the scant information, noting the presence inthe country ofthe Harmozael of "Portus Macedonum et ara Alexand in promunturio” (Vl, 10) ~ in other words, of @ Graeco-Macedonian town on the Gulf of Ormuz and of altars on Cape ask attributed to (or dedicated to) Alexander. Ptolemy (1,18) mentions three Carmarian cities the inevitable Alexandria: Carmania Metropolis (robably modem Kerman): and Harmozia‘oF Ormozla, doubless Pliny’ Portus Macedonum, from which hhand-sewm native coracles operated a regular ferry service to ‘rabia. Megasthenes adds a fourth place name, that of Akos, placing somewhere inthe Upper ut basin By the death of Antiochus IV in 363, the Seleucid had lost most of ther Persian satrapies, including Persis and Sestan; on the ‘ather hand, Carmania did not at that time, of For the next two