Wood (Robert) The Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor, in the Desart, engraved panorama extending over 3 plates and 56 engraved plates & plans, 3 full-page engraved illustrations of inscriptions, 1753; The Ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis in Coelosyria, 47 engraved plates & plans, 11 double-page and folding, engraved inscription to text, 1757, together 2 vol. in 1, first editions, most plates by Fourdinier or Thomas Major after G.B.Borra, some light foxing or browning, particularly to central fold of second work, light water-staining to lower margin of a few plates, most notably plate XII of Balbec (also with short tear to margin), handsome modern half vellum, spine titled in gilt and with elaborate gilt tooling, slightly rubbed at lower edges, [Berlin Kat. 1884 & 1887; Blackmer 1834 (French edition) & 1835; Fowler 443 & 444; Harris 939 & 936; Millard British 92 & 93], folio

⁂ Handsomely-bound pair of works, the result of the author's travels in the Levant in 1750-51 accompanied by the draughtsman Giovanni Battista Borra. The "Ruins of Palmrya...was by all accounts a triumph such as no English architectural book had ever before achieved. Here was the first of a new breed of archaeological works presenting the results of on-the-spot investigations of ancient monuments, with ostensibly accurate measured drawings of the ruins, precise descriptions of the state in which they were discovered, and exact copies of what inscriptions there were". (Harris).