Craufurd Commander C E V (4 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. frontis, photos, 288p. Original reddish brown cloth. 24cm. A few minor cover spots. Spine slightly sloped. Lacks the plate with two photos that should face page 166. No Jacket.

1st Ed. 288pp. Port. frontis., numerous ills., 3 maps. Light browning, original gilt lettered maroon cloth, light fading, spine sl. bumped. US$74.

288pp + 25 b/w photo illus. With 3 b/w maps in the text. Travels in Arabia in search of Ophir, fullfilling a childhood ambition. Cloth boards, scuffed and marked. Corners and top and bottom of spine little bumped and frayed. Contents little fingered and foxed. 24x16cms.

First edition; 8vo (24 x 16 cm); 25 photographic illustrations and 3 maps; publisher's red cloth, touch of bumping to spine otherwise fine, a very good copy; 288pp. An entertaining account of the author's realisation of his childhood dream to search for the Biblical Lost City of Ophir in the Arabian Peninsula. Charles Edward Vereker Craufurd (1884-1947) believed the coast of Yemen was the historical land of Ophir, the fabled Biblical location said to contain great hosts of gold, and that the city itself lay between Mirbat and Rayzut. He identified it as the same city as Mesha, one of ancient cities of the Hebrews in Genesis, and the biblical Mount Sephar being Jabal Samhan, the mountain behind Mirbat. This differs to modern interpretations which put both Mesha and Sephar in Western Oman around Dhafar, and Ophir itself further up the Red Sea into Saudi Arabia. Despite this Craufurd has been subsequently vindicated in his belief in the existence of Ophir by the discovery of a tablet in Tel Aviv in 1946 which reads "gold of Ophir to/for Beth-Horon. 30 shekels".