PROFESSOR ROBERT TEMPLE is author of a dozen challenging and provocative books commencing with the international best-seller The Sirius Mystery. His books have been translated into a total of 44 foreign languages. He combines solid academic scholarship with an ability to communicate with the mass public. He is Visiting Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing and previously held a similar position at an American university. For many years he was a science writer for the Sunday Times the Guardian and a science reporter for Time-Life as well as a frequent reviewer for Nature and profile writer for The New Scientist. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and has been a member of the Egypt Exploration Society since the 1970s as well as a member of numerous other academic societies. He has produced written and presented a documentary for Channel Four and National Geographic Channels on his archaeological discoveries in Greece and Italy and he was at one time an arts reviewer on BBC Radio 4s Kaleidoscope. In 1993 his translation of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh was performed at the Royal National Theatre in London. With his wife Olivia he is co-author and translator of the first complete English version of Aesops Fables which attracted a great deal of international press attention at the time of its release as the earlier translations had suppressed some of the fables because of Victorian prudery.