Free Republic

Nothing lasts forever. Just ask Ozymandias, or Nate Fisher. Only the wind inhabits the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado, birds and vines the pyramids of the Maya. Sand and silence have swallowed the clamors of frankincense traders and camels in the old desert center of Ubar. Troy was buried for centuries before it was uncovered. Parts of the Great Library of Alexandria, center of learning in the ancient world, might be sleeping with the fishes, off Egypt's coast in the Mediterranean. "Cities rise and fall depending on what made them go in the first place," said Peirce Lewis,...

Hedges retained an interest in archaeology throughout his law career. A 1984 luncheon conversation with filmmaker Nicholas Clapp brought the fabled city of Ubar to his attention. An important center of the frankincense trade 3,000 years before the birth of Christ, Ubar had been unsuccessfully sought by a variety of archaeologists and explorers, and many thought it was mythical. Hedges and Clapp decided it was real and enlisted JPL scientists Blom and Charles Elachi, who persuaded NASA astronauts to photograph the region of southern Oman where they believed the city would be found. Those photos revealed faint traces of ancient...