Temple of Eshmun

The Temple of Eshmun (Arabic: معبد أشمون) is an ancient place of worship dedicated to Eshmun, the Phoenician god of healing. It is located near the Awali river, 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) northeast of Sidon in southwestern Lebanon. The site was occupied from the 7th century BC to the 8th century AD, suggesting an integrated relationship with the nearby city of Sidon. Although originally constructed by Sidonian king Eshmunazar II in the Achaemenid era (c. 529–333 BC) to celebrate the city's recovered wealth and stature, the temple complex was greatly expanded by Bodashtart, Yatonmilk and later monarchs. Because the continued expansion spanned many centuries of alternating independence and foreign hegemony, the sanctuary features a wealth of different architectural and decorative styles and influences.

The sanctuary consists of an esplanade and a grand court limited by a huge limestone terrace wall that supports a monumental podium which was once topped by Eshmun's Greco-Persian style marble temple. The sanctuary features a series of ritual ablution basins fed by canals channeling water from the Asclepius river (modern Awali) and from the sacred "YDLL" spring; these installations were used for therapeutic and purificatory purposes that characterize the cult of Eshmun. The sanctuary site has yielded many artifacts of value, especially those inscribed with Phoenician texts, such as the Bodashtart inscriptions and the Eshmun inscription, providing valuable insight into the site's history and that of ancient Sidon.

The Eshmun Temple was improved during the early Roman Empire with a colonnade street, but declined after earthquakes and fell into oblivion as Christianity replaced polytheism and its large limestone blocks were used to build later structures. The temple site was rediscovered in 1900 by local treasure hunters who stirred the curiosity of international scholars. Maurice Dunand, a French archaeologist, thoroughly excavated the site from 1963 until the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975. After the end of the hostilities and the retreat of Israel from Southern Lebanon, the site was rehabilitated and inscribed to the World Heritage Site tentative list.

## Eshmun

Eshmun (Latinized form of the Phoenician ) was the Phoenician god of healing and renewal of life; he was one of the most important divinities of the Phoenician pantheon and the main male divinity of Sidon. Originally a nature divinity, and a god of spring vegetation, Eshmun was equated to Babylonian deity Tammuz. His role later expanded within the Phoenician pantheon, and he gained celestial and cosmic attributes.

The myth of Eshmun was related by the sixth century Syrian Neoplatonist philosopher Damascius and ninth century Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius. They recount that Eshmun, a young man from Beirut, was hunting in the woods when Astarte saw him and was stricken by his beauty. She harassed him with her amorous pursuit until he emasculated himself with an axe and died. The grieving goddess revived Eshmun and transported him to the heavens where she made him into a god of heaven.

From a historical perspective, the first written mention of Eshmun goes back to 754 BC, the date of the signing of the treaty between Assyrian king Ashur-nirari V and Mati'el, king of Arpad; Eshmun figures in the text as a patron of the treaty.

Eshmun was identified with Asclepius as a result of the Hellenic influence over Phoenicia; the earliest evidence of this equation is given by coins from Amrit and Acre from the third century BC. This fact is exemplified by the Hellenized names of the Awali river which was dubbed Asclepius fluvius, and the Eshmun Temple's surrounding groves, known as the groves of Asclepius.

## History

### Historical background

In the 9th century BC, the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II conquered the Lebanon mountain range and its coastal cities. The new sovereigns exacted tribute from Sidon, along with every other Phoenician city. These payments stimulated Sidon's search for new means of provisioning and furthered Phoenician emigration and expansion, which peaked in the 8th century BC. When Assyrian king Sargon II died in 705 BC, King Luli joined with the Egyptians and Judah in an unsuccessful rebellion against Assyrian rule, but was forced to flee to Kition (modern Larnaca in Cyprus) with the arrival of the Assyrian army headed by Sennacherib, Sargon II's son and successor. Sennacherib instated Ittobaal on the throne of Sidon and reimposed the annual tribute. When Abdi-Milkutti ascended to Sidon's throne in 680 BC, he also rebelled against the Assyrians. In response, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon laid siege to the city. Abdi-Milkutti was captured and beheaded in 677 BC after a three-year siege, while his city was destroyed and renamed Kar-Ashur-aha-iddina (the harbor of Esarhaddon). Sidon was stripped of its territory, which was awarded to Baal I, the king of rival Tyre, and loyal vassal to Esarhaddon. Baal I and Esarhaddon signed a treaty in 675 in which Eshmun's name features as one of the deities invoked as guarantors of the covenant.

### Construction

Sidon returned to its former level of prosperity while Tyre was besieged for 13 years (586–573 BC) by the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar II. Nevertheless, the Sidonian king was still held in exile at the court of Babylon. Sidon reclaimed its former standing as Phoenicia's chief city in the Achaemenid Empire (c.529–333 BC). Eshmunazar I, a priest of Astarte, and the founder of his namesake dynasty, became king around the time of the Achaemenid conquest of the Levant. Archaeological evidence suggest that, at the time of the advent of the Eshmunazar dynasty, there already was a cultic space on the site of the temple, but there were no monumental constructions yet. Originally, the center of worship may have been a cave or a spring.

In the following years, Xerxes I awarded king Eshmunazar II with the Sharon plain for employing Sidon's fleet in his service during the Greco-Persian Wars. Eshmunazar II displayed his new-found wealth by constructing numerous temples to Sidonian divinities. Inscriptions found on the king's sarcophagus reveal that he and his mother, Amoashtart, built temples to the gods of Sidon, including the Temple of Eshmun by the "Ydll source near the cistern".As the Bodashtart inscriptions on the foundations of the monumental podium attest, construction of the sanctuary's podium did not begin until the reign of King Bodashtart. The first set of inscriptions bears the name of Bodashtart alone, while the second contains his name and that of the crown prince Yatonmilk. Thirty foundation inscriptions are known to date; they were found concealed in the interior of the podium. The practice of intentional inscription concealment can be traced back to Mesopotamian roots, and it has parallels in the royal buildings of the Achaemenids in Persia and Elam. A Phoenician inscription, located 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) upstream from the temple, that dates to the 7th year of Bodashtart's reign, alludes to water adduction works from the Awali river to the "Ydll" source that was used for ritual purification at the temple.

### Roman era and decline

The Eshmun sanctuary was damaged by an earthquake in the fourth century BC, which demolished the marble temple atop the podium; this structure was not rebuilt but many chapels and temples were later annexed at the base of the podium.

The temple site remained a place of pilgrimage in the classical antiquity during the early Roman Empire and until the advent of Christianity, when the cult of Eshmun was banned during the Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire and a Christian church was built at the temple site across the Roman street from the podium.

A Roman colonnade was built in the third century, probably by emperor Septimius Severus, and a Roman Villa showed a period of renewed relative importance for the city during the late period of Phoenicia under Roman rule. Furthermore, within the original Phoenician temple site the Romans added the processional stairway, the basins for ablutions and a nymphaeum with pictorial mosaics, that are still largely intact. Worn statuettes of three nymphs stand in the niches of a Roman fountain.

Another earthquake hit Sidon around 570 AD; Antoninus of Piacenza, an Italian Christian pilgrim, described the city as partly in ruins. For many years after the disappearance of the cult of Eshmun, the sanctuary site was used as a quarry: Emir Fakhr-al-Din II used its massive blocks to build a bridge over the Awali river in the 17th century.

The site later fell into oblivion until the 19th century

### Modern discovery

Between 1737 and 1742, Richard Pococke, an English anthropologist, toured the Middle East and wrote of what he thought were ruins of defensive walls built with 3.7-metre (12 ft) stone blocks near the Awali river. When the French orientalist Ernest Renan visited the area in 1860, he noticed that the Awali bridge abutments were built of finely rusticated blocks that originated from an earlier structure. He also noted in his report, Mission de Phénicie, that a local treasure hunter told him of a large edifice near the Awali bridge.

The discovery was made in 1900 by four workers who were extracting blocks from the temple on behalf of Druze notable Nassib Jumblatt. They noticed that certain blocks had inscriptions with the engravings painted in red. A local antiques dealer bought three of the stones, all with the same inscription. Due to the enormous size of the blocks, they were cut down to just 15 or 20 cm in thickness, and some stones were also cut into two or three pieces. The Ottoman authorities dispatched Theodore Makridi, curator of the Museum of Constantinople, who cleared the temple remains between 1901 and 1903. Wilhelm Von Landau also excavated the site between 1903 and 1904. In 1920, Gaston Contenau headed a team of archaeologists who surveyed the temple complex. The first extensive archaeological excavation revealing the Eshmun Temple remains was undertaken by Maurice Dunand between 1963 and 1975. Archaeological evidence shows that the site was occupied from the seventh century BC to the eighth century AD.

### After 1975

During the Lebanese Civil War and the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon (1985–2000), the temple site was neglected and was invaded by vegetation overgrowth; it was cleared and recovered its former condition after the Israeli withdrawal. Today the Eshmun sanctuary can be visited all year round and free of charge, it is accessible from an exit ramp off the main Southern Lebanon highway near Sidon's northern entrance. The site holds a particular archaeological importance since it is the best preserved Phoenician site in Lebanon; it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List's Cultural category on July 1, 1996.

In literature, the temple of Eshmun figures in Nabil Saleh's 2009 novel, The Curse of Ezekiel as the setting where Bomilcar falls in love and rescues princess Chiboulet from the evil design of one of the temple's priests.

## Location

A number of ancient texts mention the Eshmun Temple and its location. The Phoenician inscriptions on the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, a Sidonian king, commemorate the construction of a "house" for the "holy prince" Eshmun by the king and his mother, queen Amashtart, at the "Ydll source by the cistern". Dionysius Periegetes, an ancient Greek travel writer, identified the Eshmun temple by the Bostrenos River, and Antonin de Plaisance, a 6th-century AD Italian pilgrim recorded the shrine as near the river Asclepius fluvius. Strabo and other Sidonian sources describe the sanctuary and its surrounding "sacred forests" of Asclepius, the Hellenized name of Eshmun, in written texts.

Located about 40 kilometres (25 mi) south of Beirut and 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) northeast of Sidon, the Eshmun Temple sits on the southern bank of the modern Awali river, previously referred to as Bostrenos or Asclepius fluvius in ancient texts. Citrus groves, known as Bustan el-Sheikh (Arabic: بستان الشيخ, the grove of the Sheikh), occupy the ancient "sacred forests" of Asclepius and are a favorite summer picnic location for locals.

## Architecture and description

Built under Babylonian rule (605–539 BC), the oldest monument at the site was a pyramidal building resembling a ziggurat that included an access ramp to a water cistern. Fragments of an early, Babylonian-style temple survived into modern time; these include marble torus-shaped column bases with moldings, facetted columns, and bull protome capitals. The Babylonian-style temple was dismantled around the middle of the 4th century BC. The remains of the demolished temple were cast in a favissa that only contained material dating from the 5th and first half of the 4th century BC.

The pyramidal structure was superimposed during the Persian period by a massive ashlar podium constructed from heavily bossed limestone blocks that measured more than 3 metres (9.8 ft) across by 1 metre (3.3 ft) thick, which were laid down in courses 1-metre (3.3 ft) high. The podium stands 22 metres (72 ft) high, runs 50 metres (160 ft) into the hillside, and boasts a 70-metre (230 ft) wide façade. The terrace atop of the podium was once covered by a Greco-Persian style marble temple built in the Ionic order around 500 BC. The marble temple has been reduced to a few remaining stone fragments due to theft.

During the Hellenistic period, the sanctuary was extended from the base of the podium across the valley. To the east base of the podium stands a large chapel, 10.5 by 11.5 metres (34 ft × 38 ft), dating to the 4th century BC. The chapel was adorned with a paved pool and a large stone "Throne of Astarte" carved of a single block of granite in the Egyptian style; it is flanked by two sphinx figures and surrounded by two lion sculptures. The throne, attributed to the Sidonian goddess Astarte, rests against the chapel wall, which is embellished by relief sculptures of hunting scenes. The once important Astarte basin lost its function during the 2nd century AD and was filled with earth and statue fragments. The west base contains another 4th-century BC chapel—centered on a bull protome topped capital—that remains preserved at the National Museum of Beirut.

Widely known as the "Tribune of Eshmun" because of its shape, the altar of Eshmun is a white marble structure dating to the 4th century BC. It is 2.15 metres (7.1 ft) long by 2.26 metres (7.4 ft) wide and 2.17 metres (7.1 ft) tall. Unearthed in 1963 by Maurice Dunand, it stands on a limestone socleplated with marble blocks that rest against a retaining wall. The altar is adorned with Hellenistic style relief sculptures and is framed by decorative moldings, one of which divides the altar into two distinct registers of symmetrical composition. The upper register portrays 18 Greek deities, including two charioteers surrounding the Greek god Apollo, who is depicted playing a cithara (a type of lyre). The lower register honors Dionysus, who leads his thiasos (his ecstatic retinue) in a dance to the music of pipe and cithara players. The Tribune is displayed at the National Museum of Beirut.

Northeast of the site, another 3rd century BC temple stands adjacent to the Astarte chapel. Its 22-metre (72 ft) façade is built with large limestone blocks and displays a two-register relief decoration illustrating a drunken revelry in honor of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. Among the temple reliefs, one shows a man attempting to seize a large rooster which was the common sacrificial animal for Eshmun-Asclepius.

The Eshmun Temple complex comprises an elaborate hydraulic installation channeling water from "Ydll" spring that is made up of an intricate system of water canals, a series of retaining basins, sacred ablution basins and paved pools. This system demonstrates the importance of ritual ablutions in Phoenician therapeutic cults.

Later vestiges date from the Roman epoch and include a colonnaded road lined with shops. Of the large marble columns bordering the Roman street only fragments and bases remain. The Romans also built a monumental staircase adorned with mosaic patterns that leads to the top of the podium. To the right of the Roman road, near the entrance of the site stands a nymphaeum with niches where statues of the nymphs once stood. The floor of the nymphaeum is covered by a mosaic depicting the Maenads. Across the colonnaded road, facing the nymphaeum, are the ruins of a Roman villa; only the villa's courtyard has survived along with the remains of a mosaic depicting the four seasons. To the right of the processional Roman staircase stands a cubic altar, also of Roman construction. Other Roman period structures include two columns of a great portico leading to pools and other cultic installations.

## Function

Eshmun's cult enjoyed a particular importance at Sidon as he was the chief deity after 500 BC. Aside from the extramural sanctuary at Bustan el-Sheikh, Eshmun also had a temple within the city. The extramural Eshmun Temple was associated with purification and healing; ritual lustral ablutions were performed in the sanctuary's sacred basins supplemented by running water from the Asclepius River and the "Ydll" spring water which was considered to have a sacred character and therapeutic quality. The healing attributions of Eshmun were combined with his divine consort Astarte's fertilizing powers; the latter had an annex chapel with a sacred paved pool within the Eshmun sanctuary. Pilgrims from all over the ancient world flocked to the Eshmun Temple leaving votive traces of their devotion and proof of their cure. There is evidence that from the 3rd century BC onwards there have been attempts to Hellenize the cult of Eshmun and to associate him with his Greek counterpart Asclepius, but the sanctuary retained its curative function.

## Artifacts and finds

Apart from the large decorative elements, carved friezes and mosaics which were left in situ, many artifacts were recovered and moved from the Eshmun Temple to the national museum, the Louvre or are in possession of the Lebanese directorate general of antiquities. Some of these smaller finds include a collection of inscribed ostraca unearthed by Dunand providing rare examples of cursive Phoenician writing in the Phoenician mainland. One of the recovered ostracon bears the theophoric Phoenician name "grtnt" which suggests that veneration of the lunar-goddess Tanit occurred in Sidon.A number of fragmented votive life-size sculptures of little children lying on their side and holding a pet animal or a small object were also recovered at the temple site; among the best known of these is the Baalshillem Temple Boy, a sculpture of a royal child holding a dove with his right hand. The boy's head is shaved, his torso is bare and his lower body is wrapped in a large cloth. The socle of this sculpture is inscribed with a dedication from Baalshillem II, a Sidonian king to Eshmun, which illustrates the importance of the site to the Sidonian monarchy. These votive sculptures appear to have been purposely broken after dedication to Eshmun and then ceremoniously cast into the sacred canal, probably simulating the sacrifice of the sick child. All of these sculptures represent boys. A31.5 cm × 27 cm (12.4 in × 10.6 in) limestone bust of a Kouros dating from the 6th century BC was found at the site, but unlike the archaic Greek kouroi this figure is not bare.

Among the notable finds is a golden plaque showing a snake curling on a staff, a Hellenic symbol of Eshmun. and a granite altar bearing the name of Egyptian Pharaoh Achoris uncovered in the Eshmun sanctuary. This gift attests to the good relations between the Pharaoh and the kings of Sidon.

The repute of the sanctuary was far reaching. Cypriot pilgrims from Paphos left marks of their devotion for Astarte on a marble stele inscribed both in Greek and Cypriot syllabary at Astarte's shrine; this stele is now in the custody of the Lebanese directorate general of antiquities.

## Pillaging

Treasure hunters have sought out the Eshmun Temple since antiquity; around 1900 artifacts bearing Phoenician inscriptions from the temple site found their way to Beirut's antiquities markets where they stirred the interest of the Ottoman authorities and prompted a series of archeological digs. During the civil war, upon a request from then Lebanese director general of antiquities Maurice Chehab, Maurice Dunand moved more than 2000 artifacts from Sidon to a subterranean chamber at the Byblos crusader castle, 30 kilometres (19 mi) north of Beirut. In 1981, the depot was looted and around 600 sculptures and architectural elements were stolen and smuggled out of Lebanon. Rolf Stucky, ex-director of the Institute of Classical Archaeology of Basel affirmed during a conference in Beirut in December 2009 the successful identification and return of eight sculptures to the Lebanese national museum.

## See also

- Phoenician sanctuary of Kharayeb
- Roman temple of Bziza
- Stucky's drawings architectural elements and reconstructed model of the Temple of Eshmun

Ancient temple to the Phoenician god of healing in Lebanon

7th-century BC religious buildings and structures

Conversion of non-Christian religious buildings and structures into churches


Ace Attorney

Ace Attorney is a visual novel adventure video games franchise developed by Capcom. With storytelling fashioned after legal dramas, the first entry in the series, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, was released in 2001; since then, five further main series games, as well as various spin-offs, prequels and high-definition remasters for newer game consoles, have been released. Additionally, the series has seen adaptations in the form of a live-action film and an anime, and has been the base for manga series, drama CDs, musicals and stage plays.

The player takes the roles of various defense attorneys, including Phoenix Wright, his mentor Mia Fey, and his understudies Apollo Justice and Athena Cykes, who investigate cases and defend their clients in court; they find the truth by cross-examining witnesses and finding inconsistencies between the testimonies and the evidence they have collected. The cases all last a maximum of three days, with the judge determining the outcome based on evidence presented by the defense attorney and the prosecutor.

While the original Japanese versions of the games are set in Japan, the series' localizations are set in the United States (primarily Los Angeles), though retaining Japanese cultural elements. In the spin-off series Ace Attorney Investigations, the player takes the role of prosecutor Miles Edgeworth and in the prequel series The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, of Phoenix's ancestor Ryunosuke Naruhodo.

The series was created by the writer and director Shu Takumi. He wanted the series to end after the third game, but it continued, with Takeshi Yamazaki taking over as writer and director starting with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (2009); Takumi has since returned to write and direct some spin-off titles. The series has been well received, with reviewers liking the characters and story, and the finding of contradictions; it has also performed well commercially, with Capcom regarding it as one of their strongest intellectual properties. The series has been credited with helping to popularize visual novels in the Western world. As of December 31, 2022, the game series has sold 9.8 million units worldwide.

## Games

The Ace Attorney series launched in Japan with the Game Boy Advance game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney in 2001, and has been published in the West since the release of a Nintendo DS port in 2005. The series currently consists of six main series games and five spin-offs.

### Main series

- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is the first entry in the series. It was originally released for the Game Boy Advance in 2001 in Japan; it has also been released for the Nintendo DS in 2005, Microsoft Windows in 2008, and the Wii and iOS in 2009.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice for All was originally released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002 in Japan; it has also been released for the Nintendo DS in 2006, Microsoft Windows in 2008, and the Wii in 2010.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations was originally released for the Game Boy Advance in 2004 in Japan; it has also been released for Microsoft Windows in 2006, the Nintendo DS in 2007, and the Wii in 2010.
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney was released for the Nintendo DS in 2007 in Japan and in 2008 in the West, for iOS and Android in 2016, and for Nintendo 3DS in 2017.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies was originally released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2013 in Japan, North America and Europe; outside of Japan, it was given a digital-only release. It was also released for iOS in 2014, and Android in 2017.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2016 in Japan, North America and Europe. Like Dual Destinies, it was given a digital-only release outside Japan. It was released for iOS and Android in 2017.

### Spin-offs

#### Ace Attorney Investigations series

- Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is the first entry in the Investigations spin-off series. It was released for the Nintendo DS in 2009 in Japan and in 2010 in the West; it has also been released for Android and iOS in 2017.
- Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is the second entry in the Investigations series. It was released for the Nintendo DS in 2011 in Japan; it has also been released for Android and iOS in 2017. It has not been released in the West and, as of 2023, is the only game in the series that has not had an official English language translation.

#### The Great Ace Attorney series

- The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures was released in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS in 2015, and for Android and iOS in 2017.
- The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve was released in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS in 2017, and for Android and iOS in 2018.

#### Professor Layton crossover

- Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a crossover between Ace Attorney and the Professor Layton series. It was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2012 in Japan and in 2014 in the West.

### Compilations

- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy contains the first three games in the series: Phoenix Wright, Justice for All, and Trials and Tribulations. It was released for iOS and Android in 2012 in Japan and for iOS in 2013 in the West, It was later released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2014, and Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, in 2019. Capcom removed the mobile-only version of the game from stores, and replaced it with the console version on iOS and Android as of June 10, 2022.
- The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles contains both games in The Great Ace Attorney series: Adventures and 2: Resolve. It was released in July 2021 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Windows. This was the first time both games were made officially available outside of Japan.
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy contains the fourth through sixth mainline games: Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies, and Spirit of Justice. It is set for release in early 2024 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.

## Common elements

### Gameplay

The Ace Attorney games are visual novel adventure games in which the player controls defense attorneys and defends their clients in several different episodes. The gameplay is split into two types of sections: investigations and courtroom trials. During the investigations, the player searches the environments, gathering information and evidence, and talks to characters such as their client, witnesses, and the police. Once enough evidence has been collected, the game moves on to a courtroom trial section.

In the courtroom trials, the player aims to get their client declared "not guilty". To do so, they cross-examine witnesses, and aim to find lies and inconsistencies in the testimonies. They are able to go back and forth between the different statements in the testimony, and can press the witness for more details on a statement. When the player finds an inconsistency, they can present a piece of evidence that contradicts the statement. If the player is correct, the game presents a sequence that often starts with the protagonist shouting "Objection!" and pointing at the witness along with a shift in music before they begin to grill the witness with the inconsistency, which has become an iconic aspect of the series. The player is penalized if they present incorrect evidence: in the first game, a number of exclamation marks are shown, with one disappearing after each mistake the player makes; in later games, a health bar that represents the judge's patience is used instead; and in 3DS games, the character's lawyer badge is used. If all exclamation marks or lawyer badges are lost, or the health bar reaches zero, the player loses the game and their client is declared guilty.

Several Ace Attorney games introduce new gameplay mechanics to the series. Justice for All introduces "psyche-locks", which are shown over a witness when the player asks them about a topic they do not want to discuss; using a magatama, the player can start breaking the psyche-locks by showing the witness evidence or character profiles that proves they are hiding something. The number of psyche-locks depends on how deep the secret is; when all locks are broken, the topic becomes available, giving the player access to new information. Apollo Justice introduces the "perceive" system, where the player looks for motions or actions made by witnesses that show nervousness, similar to a tell in poker.

Dual Destinies introduces the "mood matrix", through which the player can gauge the emotions of a witness, such as tones of anger when mentioning certain topics; if the player notices a contradictory emotional response during testimony, they can point out the discrepancy and press the witness for more information. Dual Destinies also introduces "revisualization", where the player reviews vital facts and forms links between evidence to reach new conclusions. Spirit of Justice introduces "divination séances", in which the player is shown the memories of victims moments before their deaths, and must find contradictions in the victim's five senses to determine what has happened. Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney introduces simultaneous cross-examinations of multiple witnesses, with the player being able to see and hear reactions from the different witnesses to the testimony and using this to find contradictions. The Great Ace Attorney introduces "joint reasoning", where the player finds out the truth by pointing out when their investigative partner Herlock Sholmes takes his reasoning "further than the truth".

The Ace Attorney Investigations spin-off series splits the gameplay into investigation phases and rebuttal phases, the latter of which is similar to the courtroom trials of the main series. During the investigation phases, the player searches for evidence and talks to witnesses and suspects. Things the player character notices in the environment are saved as thoughts; the player can use the "logic" system to connect two such thoughts to gain access to new information. At some points, the player can create hologram reproductions of the crime scene, through which they can discover new information that would otherwise be hidden. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 introduces "logic chess", where the player interrogates witnesses in a timed sequence that is visualized as a game of chess, with the player aiming to destroy the other character's chess pieces. To do this, they need to build up their advantage in the discussion by alternating between speaking and listening, and then choose to go on the offensive.

### Characters and setting

The protagonist of the first three games is the defense attorney Phoenix Wright (Ryūichi Naruhodō in the Japanese version), who is assisted by the spirit medium Maya Fey; in the third game, Phoenix's mentor Mia Fey is also a playable character. In the fourth game, the protagonist is the defense attorney Apollo Justice; in the fifth, Phoenix, Apollo and the new defense attorney Athena Cykes are all protagonists; and in the sixth, Phoenix and Apollo are the main protagonists, while Athena is playable in one case. The spin-off The Great Ace Attorney is set in England near the end of the 19th century, and follows Phoenix's ancestor Ryunosuke Naruhodo.

Phoenix's childhood friend Miles Edgeworth, who is the protagonist of the Ace Attorney Investigations games, is a recurring rival prosecutor character; in addition to him, each new game in the series introduces a new rival: Franziska von Karma is introduced in the second game, Godot in the third, Klavier Gavin in the fourth, Simon Blackquill in the fifth, Nahyuta Sahdmadhi in the sixth, Barok van Zieks in Adventures, and Kazuma Asogi in Resolve. Most of the prosecutor characters are portrayed as powerful and arrogant characters of high social status and who care about keeping perfect-win records in court, and even may favor convictions over finding the truth, although most have secret motivations and sympathetic backstories and typically help the protagonist at the game's climax. Similarly to real Japanese prosecutors, the prosecutors in the series often directly oversee investigations, issuing orders to the police. Japanese attitudes towards the police force are reflected in the series, with the police being represented by incompetent characters such as Dick Gumshoe, Maggey Byrde and Mike Meekins. In the world of Ace Attorney, trials only last three days, and usually end with a "guilty" verdict, with trials taken up by the protagonists of the games being rare exceptions. The outcomes of cases are decided by a judge, based on evidence provided by the defense attorney and the prosecutor.

## Development

The series was created by Shu Takumi, who wrote and directed the first three games. The first game was conceived in 2000 when Takumi's boss at the time, Shinji Mikami, gave him six months to create any type of game he wanted to; Takumi had originally joined Capcom wanting to make mystery and adventure games, and felt that this was a big chance for him to make a mark as a creator. The game was designed to be simple, as Takumi wanted it to be easy enough for even his mother to play. It was originally going to be a detective game, with Phoenix being a private investigator, but at one point Takumi realized that finding and taking apart contradictions was not related to detective work, and felt that the main setting of the game should be courtrooms.

Takumi cited Japanese mystery author Edogawa Ranpo as an inspiration, particularly The Psychological Test, a short story which involves a crime that "unravels due to the criminal's contradictory testimony." It had a big impact on him, and was a major influence on the game. He was also inspired by stories from another Japanese author, Shinichi Hoshi, stating that he was pursuing his "element of surprise and unexpectedness."

Takumi felt that the best way to write a mystery with a good climax is to reveal various clues, and then pull them together into one conclusion, and not have multiple possible endings. He said that the biggest challenge with that was to make the gameplay and story work together; the goal was to make the player feel like they have driven the story forward themselves, with their own choices, even though the game is linear. He only spent little time on writing a backstory for Phoenix before writing the first game's story, and instead made up dialogue and developed Phoenix's personality as he went along. He came up with the partner character Maya because he thought it would be more fun for players to have another character with them, giving them advice, than investigating on their own.

After the first game's development was finished, Mikami told Takumi that they should make an Ace Attorney trilogy, with a grand finale in the third game's last case. Takumi had originally planned to let Edgeworth be the prosecutor in all episodes in the second game, but during the production the development team learned that the character had become popular. This led to Takumi feeling that he had to use the character more carefully and sparingly; he created the new prosecutor character Franziska von Karma, to save Edgeworth for the game's last case, and avoid a situation where he—a supposed prodigy—loses every case. As Takumi wanted the three first Ace Attorney games to be parts of a larger work, he avoided making a lot of changes between games: art from the first game for main characters such as Phoenix, Maya and Edgeworth was reused, to avoid having the previous games look outdated in comparison to newer games in the series; and no new gameplay mechanics were added for Trials and Tribulations, as Takumi was happy with the gameplay after having added the psyche-lock mechanic for Justice for All.

For the fourth game, Takumi wrote the scenario and took on a supervisory role. He had wanted the series to end with the third game, as he felt Phoenix had been fully explored and that his story had been told; he said that it is important to know when to end a story, that he did not want the series to become a shadow of its former self, and that he did not see any reason to continue it. Despite this, the spin-off series Ace Attorney Investigations was created, being directed by Takeshi Yamazaki and produced by Motohide Eshiro; Takumi returned to the series to write the crossover Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. He also directed and wrote The Great Ace Attorney, which was described as being the first entry in a new Ace Attorney series. He said that he has mixed feelings about the series being developed by other Capcom staff, comparing it to a parent sending their child to their first day in school. Yamazaki and Eshiro went on to direct and produce the main series entries Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice. Due to exhaustion after working on Dual Destinies, Yamazaki split direction responsibilities with Takuro Fuse for Spirit of Justice, with Yamazaki working on the scenario, and Fuse on the art and gameplay. In 2020, Yamazaki left Capcom.

## Localization

The localization of the first game was outsourced to Bowne Global, and was handled by the writer Alexander O. Smith and the editor Steve Anderson. While the Japanese version takes place in Japan, the localized version is set in the United States: because one of the episodes involves time zones, they had to specify where the game takes place, and chose the United States without thinking a lot about it. The Japanese justice system of the original still remained intact in the localization, as changing it would have altered the entire game structure.

The change in the series' setting became an issue in later games, where the Japanese setting was more obvious. Starting with the second game, the series localization direction has been handled by Janet Hsu; One of the first decisions she had to make was how to localize Maya's hometown and the mysticism of the Fey clan. She came up with the idea that the localized versions of the Ace Attorney games take place in Los Angeles in an alternative universe where anti-Japanese laws like the California Alien Land Law of 1913 were not passed, anti-Japanese sentiments were not powerful, and where Japanese culture flourished. This dictated what should be localized and what should be kept Japanese; things relating to the Fey clan and the Kurain channeling technique were kept Japanese, as that was Maya's heritage, while Japanese foods that were not widely known in the West were changed, such as changing Maya's favorite food from ramen to burgers. That particular change was mocked by players as the dish later became more well known in the West, and was lampshaded in the English release of Spirit of Justice, where Maya is described as liking both ramen and burgers.

Character names were also localized to use double meanings similarly to the Japanese names; the name puns were based on the characters' personalities or backgrounds, or were visual gags. Several English names were based on their Japanese counterparts, but for some characters the names had to be altered heavily compared to the Japanese versions. Smith and Anderson had a lot of freedom when localizing the names of minor characters in the first game, but discussed the names of the main cast with Capcom. Phoenix's English surname, "Wright", was chosen as his Japanese name, "Naruhodō"—meaning "I see" or "I understand"—was frequently used as a joke in the script.

Dual Destinies was given a digital-only release in the West as to release the English version as close to the Japanese release date as possible while maintaining a tight development schedule. Its follow-up, Spirit of Justice, was released in the same manner. Although Ace Attorney Investigations 2 has not been officially localized, an English fan translation has been made. Both The Great Ace Attorney games were released in the West with English localization in July 2021 as part of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, making Ace Attorney Investigations 2 the only game in the series to remain a Japan-only release.

## Reception

The Ace Attorney series has been well received by critics, and has performed well commercially: in December 2009, it was Capcom's 9th-best-selling series of all time, and in October 2010, they called it one of their "strongest intellectual properties", with more than 3.9 million units sold worldwide. By December 2013, the series had sold over 5 million units. In the United States, the first game became surprisingly successful, forcing Capcom to prepare at least three additional runs to meet the demand. By June 2018, the series had sold over 6.7 million units. As of December 31, 2022, the game series has sold 9.8 million units worldwide. Geoff Thew at Hardcore Gamer said that the "craziness" of the game world makes the cases entertaining, but also that it "resonates on a deeper level" due to its connection to the real Japanese legal system, making the setting still feel relevant in 2014. Bob Mackey at USgamer said that the Ace Attorney games were among the best written games of all time, and that the series' strength is how each game builds up to a "stunning and satisfying finale". Thomas Whitehead at Nintendo Life also liked the writing, praising its balance between "light-hearted nonsense" and darker, more serious scenarios. Several reviewers have appreciated the series' characters; Thew said that Phoenix and Maya's banter is among the best in video games, and that Edgeworth's character arc is one of the most compelling parts of the stories.

Reviewers have liked finding contradictions; a common complaint, however, is the games' linearity, as well as how the player sometimes has to resort to a trial-and-error method due to the games only accepting specific pieces of evidence, and how testimony statements sometimes need to be pressed in a specific order. Some reviewers have criticized the lack of changes to the gameplay and presentation throughout the series, while some have said that fans of the series would not have a problem with this.

Several reviewers have praised the series' music. They said that the greatest aspect of the series is its audio design, with the first three games using the Game Boy Advance sound chip better than any other game for that platform; he called the music phenomenal, with the exception of that in Justice for All, but said the sound effects are what "steals the show". Mackey commented that the games' small amounts of animations for each character are used well for their characterization.

## Related media and other appearances

The Takarazuka Revue, an all-female theater troupe, has adapted the series into stage musicals: 2009's Ace Attorney: Truth Resurrected, which is based on the last episode of the first game; 2010's Ace Attorney 2: Truth Resurrected Again, whose first act is an original story, and whose second is based on the final episode of the second game; and 2013's Ace Attorney 3: Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, which is set before the events of Truth Resurrected Again. A stage play based on the series, titled Gyakuten no Spotlight, ran in 2013, and was written by Eisaku Saito. A 2012 live-action film adaptation of the first game, titled Ace Attorney, was produced at the film studio Toei and directed by Takashi Miike. A 2016 TV anime adaptation of the series, Ace Attorney, was produced at A-1 Pictures and directed by Ayumu Watanabe.

Kodansha has published several manga based on the series: a short story anthology was published in Bessatsu Young Magazine in 2006; Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth were serialized in Weekly Young Magazine in 2007 and 2009, respectively; and another manga, which is based on the anime, was published in V Jump in 2016. A novel based on the series, Gyakuten Saiban: Turnabout Idol, was released in June 2016. Ace Attorney drama CDs, soundtrack albums, and figurines have also been released.

Ace Attorney characters have made crossover appearances in other video games. Some Ace Attorney characters appear in SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS. Phoenix and Edgeworth make a cameo appearance in She-Hulk's ending in the fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds; in the game's update, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Phoenix appears as a playable character. Phoenix and Maya are playable characters in Project X Zone 2, while Edgeworth makes a non-player appearance. Phoenix, Maya, Edgeworth and Franziska were all playable in the mobile game Monster Hunter Explore in 2017, as part of one of its temporary crossover events, and a Phoenix transformation is available for a companion character in Monster Hunter XX. Music from the Ace Attorney series is featured in Taiko Drum Master: Doko Don! Mystery Adventure, with Phoenix making an appearance in the game's story. In April 2021, Ace Attorney was introduced to Teppen alongside the Dead Rising franchise with the "Ace vs. The People" expansion.

## Legacy

In 2015, GamesRadar+ named Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney as the 55th-best video game of all time. In 2016, Famitsu readers voted Gyakuten Saiban as the second-most memorable Game Boy Advance title (behind only Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire) and Gyakuten Saiban 123 as the tenth-best Nintendo 3DS game. In 2017, Famitsu readers voted Gyakuten Saiban the third-best adventure game of all time, behind only Steins;Gate and 428: Shibuya Scramble.

The Ace Attorney series has been credited with helping to popularise visual novels in the Western world. Vice magazine credits the Ace Attorney series with popularising the visual novel mystery format, and notes that its success anticipated the resurgence of point-and-click adventure games as well as the international success of Japanese visual novels. According to Danganronpa director Kazutaka Kodaka, Ace Attorney's success in North America was due to how it distinguished itself from most visual novels with its gameplay mechanics, which Danganronpa later built upon and helped it also find success in North America.

The Ace Attorney series has also inspired many video games. The 2008 Capcom title Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, based on the animated series, shares many elements with the Ace Attorney series. The 2013 title Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher keeps the Ace Attorney format but swaps law for philosophical argument, and the 2015 adventure game Aviary Attorney features similar gameplay but with an all-bird cast of characters. The 2016 video game Detective Pikachu, which received a 2019 film adaptation, has also drawn comparisons to the Ace Attorney series.

Ace Attorney is referenced in several anime shows. In a murder mystery arc of the 2006 anime series Haruhi Suzumiya, the show's titular character mimics Phoenix Wright during an episode. The 2014 anime series No Game No Life also pays homage to the game during an episode.

In early 2021, a user on Reddit created a bot that took selected Reddit forum arguments into short movies fashioned after Ace Attorney courtroom battles between the games' various characters.

Later that year, the San Francisco Chronicle took note of its queer inspiration and influence: the first game inspired a great deal of fanwork featuring same-sex pairings and developers in turn took inspiration from boys' love in writing the sequels' characters.

Japanese media franchise of adventure games by Capcom

Video game franchises introduced in 2001

Video games adapted into television shows


O. G. S. Crawford

Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford CBE FBA FSA (28 October 1886 – 28 November 1957) was a British archaeologist who specialised in the archaeology of prehistoric Britain and Sudan. A keen proponent of aerial archaeology, he spent most of his career as the archaeological officer of the Ordnance Survey (OS) and also wrote a range of books on archaeological subjects.

Born in Bombay, British India, to a wealthy middle-class Scottish family, Crawford moved to England as an infant and was raised by his aunts in London and Hampshire. He studied geography at Keble College, Oxford, and worked briefly in that field before devoting himself professionally to archaeology. Employed by the philanthropist Henry Wellcome, Crawford oversaw the excavation of Abu Geili in Sudan before returning to England shortly before the First World War. During the conflict he served in both the London Scottish Regiment and the Royal Flying Corps, where he was involved in ground and aerial reconnaissance along the Western Front. After an injury forced a period of convalescence in England, he returned to the Western Front, where he was captured by the German Army in 1918 and held as a prisoner of war until the end of the conflict.

In 1920, Crawford was employed by the Ordnance Survey, touring Britain to plot the location of archaeological sites, and in the process identified several that were previously unknown. Increasingly interested in aerial archaeology, he used Royal Air Force photographs to identify the extent of the Stonehenge Avenue, excavating it in 1923. With the archaeologist Alexander Keiller, he conducted an aerial survey of many counties in southern England and raised the finances to secure the land around Stonehenge for The National Trust. In 1927, he established the scholarly journal Antiquity, which contained contributions from many of Britain's most prominent archaeologists, and in 1939 he served as president of The Prehistoric Society. An internationalist and socialist, he came under the influence of Marxism and for a time became a Soviet sympathiser. During the Second World War he worked with the National Buildings Record, photographically documenting Southampton. After retiring in 1946, he refocused his attention on Sudanese archaeology and wrote several further books prior to his death.

Friends and colleagues remembered Crawford as a cantankerous and irritable individual. His contributions to British archaeology, including in Antiquity and aerial archaeology, have been widely acclaimed; some have referred to him as one of the great pioneering figures in the field. His photographic archive remained of use to archaeologists into the 21st century. A biography of Crawford by Kitty Hauser was published in 2008.

## Early life

### Childhood: 1886–1904

O. G. S. Crawford was born on 28 October 1886 at Breach Candy, a suburb of Bombay in British India. His father, Charles Edward Gordon Crawford, was a civil servant who had been educated at Marlborough College and Wadham College, Oxford before moving to India, where he became a High Court judge at Thane. The Crawford family came from Ayrshire in Scotland, and the child's great-uncle was the politician Robert Wigram Crawford. Crawford's mother, Alice Luscombe Mackenzie, was the daughter of a Scottish army doctor and his Devonshire wife. Alice died a few days after her son's birth, and so when he was three months old, Crawford was sent to England aboard the P&O liner Bokhara. During the journey he was entrusted to the care of his paternal aunt Eleanor, an Anglican nun who was the head of the Poona Convent of the Community of St Mary the Virgin.

In Britain, he spent the next seven years with two paternal aunts who lived together near to Portland Place in the Marylebone district of central London. Like his father, they were devout Christians, having been the children of a Scottish clergyman. Under their guardianship Crawford had little contact with other children or with men. Crawford saw his father on the few occasions that the latter visited England, prior to his death in India in 1894. In 1895, Crawford and his two aunts moved to a rural house in East Woodhay, Hampshire. Initially educated at Park House School, which he enjoyed, he was then moved to Marlborough College, his father's alma mater. He was unhappy there, complaining about bullying and enforced sporting activities, and characterising it as a "detestable house of torture".

At the school, Crawford was influenced by his housemaster, F. B. Malim, who presided over the archaeological section of the college's Natural History Society and encouraged the boy's interest in the subject. It is possible that Malim provided something of a father figure for the young Crawford. With the society, Crawford visited such archaeological sites as Stonehenge, West Kennet Long Barrow, Avebury, and Martinsell. It was also through the society that he obtained Ordnance Survey maps of the landscape, allowing him to explore the downs near to his aunts' home. He began excavation of a barrow near to Bull's Copse, thus attracting the attention of the antiquarian Harold Peake, who was then involved in compiling the Victoria County History of Berkshire. Peake and his wife lived a Bohemian lifestyle, being vegetarians and social reformers, and their ideas had a strong impact on Crawford. Under the Peakes' influence, Crawford rejected his religious upbringing in favour of a rationalist world-view based in science. Crawford gained an appreciation from Peake for the understanding of past societies through an examination of the geographical landscape rather than simply through texts or artefacts.

### University and early career: 1905–1914

Following his schooling, Crawford won a junior scholarship to study at Keble College, Oxford. There he began reading literae humaniores in 1905 but – after gaining only a third-class score in his second year exams – he switched courses to study geography in 1908. In 1910 he gained a distinction for his diploma, for which he had conducted a study of the landscape surrounding Andover. Reflecting his interest in the relationship between geography and archaeology, during a walking tour of Ireland he had also written a paper on the geographic distribution of Bronze Age flat bronze axes and beakers in the British Isles. It was presented to the Oxford University Anthropological Society before being published in The Geographical Journal. The archaeologist Grahame Clark later related that the paper "marked a milestone in British Archaeology; it was the first real attempt to deduce prehistoric events from the geographical distribution of archaeological objects". Crawford's fellow archaeologist Mark Bowden stated that while archaeological distribution maps had been previously produced, "archaeological data had never before been married with environmental information" in the way that Crawford did in this article.

After Crawford graduated, Professor A. J. Herbertson offered him a job as a junior demonstrator in the university's geography department. Crawford agreed, and served in the teaching position over the ensuing year. Through Herbertson, Crawford was introduced to the geographer Patrick Geddes. Crawford then decided to focus his attentions on archaeology rather than geography even though few professional positions in the field existed in Britain at the time. Looking elsewhere for archaeological employment, he unsuccessfully applied for a Craven Fellowship and for a post at Bombay Museum.

At Herbertson's recommendation, in 1913 Crawford gained employment as an assistant on William Scoresby Routledge and Katherine Routledge's expedition to Easter Island. The expedition had the intention of learning more about the island's first inhabitants and its Moai statues. After the team departed from Britain aboard the schooner Mana, Crawford began quarrelling with the Routledges. Informing them that they had demonstrated an "extraordinary lack of courtesy" and "appalling stinginess" toward both him and other crew members, he left the ship at Cape Verde and returned to Britain. He then gained employment from the wealthy philanthropist Henry Wellcome, who sent him to Egypt to gain further training in archaeological excavation from G. A. Reisner. Wellcome then sent him to Sudan, where Crawford was given charge of the excavation of the Meroitic site at Abu Geili, remaining there from January to June 1914. On his return to England—where he was planning on sorting through the artefacts found in Sudan—he and his friend Earnest Hooton began excavation of a long barrow on Wexcombe Down in Wiltshire.

### First World War: 1914–1918

It was while Crawford was engaged in this excavation that the United Kingdom entered the First World War. At Peake's encouragement, Crawford enlisted in the British Army, joining the London Scottish Regiment and was sent to reinforce the First Battalion on the Western Front. The battalion marched to Béthune to relieve the British line, fighting at Givenchy. Crawford was afflicted with influenza and malaria, and in February he was invalided back to England and stationed at Birmingham for his recuperation. After he recovered, he applied to join the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) but was deemed too heavy. He was commissioned in May 1915. In July 1915 he joined the Royal Berkshire Regiment as part of the Third Army, being stationed at Beauval and then St. Pol. Using his existing skills, he served as the regiment's maps officer, and was responsible for mapping the areas around the front line, including German Army positions. He also took photographs which were used for British propaganda purposes, and in 1916 he guided the writer H. G. Wells around the trenches on the latter's visit to the Front.

In January 1917, Crawford successfully applied to join the RFC as an observer with 23 Squadron RFC, which flew over enemy lines to make observations and draw maps. On his maiden flight, the German Army opened fire on his aircraft, and his right foot was pierced by bullets and badly injured. To recuperate, he spent time at various hospitals in France and England before being sent to the RFC Auxiliary Hospital at the Heligan estate in Cornwall. During this time in England he spent a weekend at Wells's home in Dunmow, Essex, embracing the latter's desire for a united world government and the idea that writing about global history was a contribution to that cause. While at Heligan, Crawford began work on a book, Man and his Past, in which he examined a broad sweep of human history from an archaeological and geographical perspective.

In September 1917, Crawford—who had been promoted to the position of squadron intelligence officer—joined 48 Squadron RFC, for which he again took aerial photographs during reconnaissance missions. While on one flight in February 1918, Crawford's aircraft was shot at and forced to land in German-held territory; he and his pilot were taken as prisoners of war. He was initially imprisoned at Landshut in Bavaria, from where he tried to escape by swimming down the River Isar; the river current proved too strong and he was soon recaptured. He was then transferred to Holzminden prisoner-of-war camp, where he was aware of an escape plan involving tunnelling out of the camp, but did not take part. Instead he spent much of his time working on Man and his Past and reading works by Wells, Carl Jung, and Samuel Butler. Crawford remained in the camp for seven months, until the declaration of armistice, at which he returned to Britain and was demobilised.

## Career: 1920–1945

### Ordnance Survey and Antiquity

Back in England, Crawford finished writing Man and his Past, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1921. According to the historian of archaeology Adam Stout, the book was "a manifesto, a rallying-cry for a new generation of archaeologists who shared in the idealism and the faith in the potential of Progress". Bowden suggested that it could be seen as a "manifesto for geoarchaeology, environmental archaeology and economic archaeology. The unifying theme is that all these topics should be approached through the compilation of maps". In discussing geographical methods for delineating "cultures", the work fit within the theoretical trend of culture-historical archaeology, but did not attempt to apply the concept of culture in a systematic fashion.

Crawford also returned to field work, carrying out archaeological excavation for the Cambrian Archaeological Association in both Wiltshire and Wales. In mid-1920, he excavated at Roundwood, Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight for Sir William Portal.

His expertise resulted in his being invited by Charles Close, the Director-General of the Ordnance Survey (OS), to join that organisation as their first archaeological officer. Accepting the position, Crawford moved to Southampton and began work at the project in October 1920. His arrival at the OS generated some resentment, with co-workers often seeing his post as superfluous and deeming archaeology to be unimportant. His job entailed correcting and updating information about archaeological monuments as the OS maps were revised, and involved him undertaking much fieldwork, travelling across the British landscape to check the location of previously recorded sites and discover new ones. He began in Gloucestershire in late 1920, visiting 208 sites around the Cotswolds and adding 81 previously unknown barrows to the map. Based on his research in this region, in 1925 he published his book Long Barrows and the Stone Circles of the Cotswolds and the Welsh Marches.

As part of his job, he travelled around Britain, from Scotland in the north to the Scilly Isles in the south, often conducting his fieldwork by bicycle. At archaeological sites he took photographs and stored them in his archive, and he also obtained aerial photographs of archaeological sites taken by the Royal Air Force. In this he was aided by regional antiquarian societies and by his correspondents, whom he called his "ferrets". In 1921, the Ordnance Survey published Crawford's work, "Notes on Archaeology for Guidance in the Field", in which he explained how amateur archaeologists could identify traces of old monuments, roads, and agricultural activity in the landscape. He also began producing "period maps" in which archaeological sites were marked; the first of these was on Roman Britain, and featured Roman roads and settlements. First published in 1924, it soon sold out, resulting in a second edition in 1928. He followed this with a range of further maps in the 1930s: "England in the Seventeenth Century", "Celtic Earthworks of Salisbury Plain", "Neolithic Wessex", and "Britain in the Dark Ages". Although his position had initially been precarious, in 1926 it was made permanent, despite the reluctance of the Treasury, which financed the OS at the time. By 1938, he had been able to persuade the OS to employ an assistant, W. F. Grimes, to aid him in his work.

Crawford became particularly interested in the new technique of aerial archaeology, claiming that this new process was to archaeology what the telescope was to astronomy. His association with it was honoured in Wells' 1939 novel The Shape of Things to Come, which names a survey aeroplane that discovers an ancient archaeological device "Crawford". He produced two OS leaflets containing various aerial photographs, printed in 1924 and 1929 respectively. Through these and other works he was keen to promote aerial archaeology, coming to be firmly identified with the technique. Crawford did not take these photographs himself, but collected them from RAF files and, in the 1930s, from flyers such as George Allen and Gilbert Insall.

Using RAF aerial photographs, Crawford determined the length of the Avenue at Stonehenge before embarking on an excavation of the site with A. D. Passmore in late 1923. This project attracted press attention, resulting in Crawford being contacted by the marmalade magnate and archaeologist Alexander Keiller. Keiller invited Crawford to join him in an aerial survey, financed by Keiller himself, in which they flew over Berkshire, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire in 1924, taking photographs of archaeological traces in the landscape. Many of these images were published in Crawford and Keiller's Wessex from the Air in 1928. In 1927 Crawford and Keiller helped raise the finances to buy the land around Stonehenge and present it to The National Trust to prevent it from being damaged by further agricultural or urban development. Previously, in 1923, Crawford had assisted Keiller in campaigning to prevent a radio mast being erected on the archaeologically significant Windmill Hill in Wiltshire, with Keiller later purchasing the hill and the surrounding Avebury area. Despite this working relationship, the two never became friends, perhaps a result of their highly divergent opinions and interests outside of archaeology.

In 1927, Crawford founded Antiquity; A Quarterly Review of Archaeology, a quarterly journal designed to bring together the research of archaeologists working across the world to supplement the variety of regional antiquarian periodicals that were then available. In particular, Crawford saw Antiquity as a rival to the Antiquaries Journal published by the Society of Antiquaries. Crawford was contemptuous of the Society, disliking their neglect of prehistory and believing that they did little valuable research. Although designed to have an international scope, Antiquity exhibited a clear bias towards the archaeology of Britain, with its release coinciding with the blossoming of British archaeology as a field of study. It contained contributions from a variety of young archaeologists who came to dominate the field of British archaeology, among them V. Gordon Childe, Grahame Clark, Cyril Fox, Christopher Hawkes, T. D. Kendrick, Stuart Piggott, and Mortimer Wheeler. They shared Crawford's desire to professionalise the field, thereby taking it away from the domination of antiquarian hobbyists and in a more scientific direction. To some of these individuals, Crawford himself was affectionately known as "Ogs" or "Uncle Ogs"

The journal proved influential from the start. Although not initially using a process of peer review, Crawford asked his friends to read through submissions that he was unsure about. As well as seeking to shape and define the discipline, Antiquity sought to spread news of archaeological discoveries to a wider public, thereby being more accessible than pre-existing scholarly journals. This resulted in Crawford receiving letters from proponents of various pseudo-archaeological ideas, such as the ley line theory of Alfred Watkins; he filed these letters under a section of his archive titled "Crankeries" and was annoyed that educated people believed such ideas when they were demonstrably incorrect. He refused to publish an advert in Antiquity for The Old Straight Track by Watkins, who became very bitter towards him. In 1938, Crawford served as president of the Prehistoric Society; in this position he instigated a series of excavations, inviting the German archaeologist Gerhard Bersu—persecuted in Germany by the Nazi authorities—to move to England to oversee the excavation of Little Woodbury.

### Foreign visits and Marxism

Crawford enjoyed foreign travel. In 1928 the OS sent him to the Middle East to collect aerial photographs that had been produced during the First World War and which were stored at Baghdad, Amman, and Heliopolis. In mid-1931 he visited Germany and Austria, furthering his interest in photography through the purchase of a Voigtländer. He later visited Italy with the intent of examining the possibility of producing OS maps pinpointing the country's archaeological sites; in November 1932 he met with the Italian leader Benito Mussolini, who was interested in Crawford's ideas about creating an OS map of archaeological sites in Rome. This was part of a wider project to produce a series of maps covering the entirety of the Roman Empire, for which Crawford visited various parts of Europe during the late 1920s and 1930s. Holiday destinations included Germany, Austria, Romania, Corsica, Malta, Algeria, and Tunisia, and in 1936 he purchased a plot of land in Cyprus on which he had a house built. During these vacations, he visited archaeological sites and met with local archaeologists, encouraging them to contribute articles to Antiquity.

Crawford believed that society would progress with the growth of internationalism and the increased application of science. Politically, he had moved toward socialism under the influence of Childe, who had become a close friend. He expressed the view that socialism was "the natural corollary of science in the regulation of human affairs". He attempted to incorporate Marxist ideas into his archaeological interpretations, as a result producing articles such as "The Dialectical Process in the History of Science", which was published in The Sociological Review. He became enthusiastic about the Soviet Union, a state governed by the Marxist Communist Party, viewing it as the forerunner of a future world state.

With his friend Neil Hunter, he travelled to the Soviet Union in May 1932, sailing to Leningrad aboard the Smolny. Once there, they followed a prescribed tourist itinerary, visiting Moscow, Nizhni Novgorod, Stalingrad, Rostov-on-Don, Tiflis, Armenia, Batum, and Sukhum. Crawford admired what he perceived as the progress that the Soviet Union had made since the fall of the Tsarist regime, the increasingly classless and gender-equal status of its population, and the respect accorded to scientists in planning its societal development. He described his holiday with glowing praise in a book, A Tour of Bolshevy, stating that he did so to "hasten the downfall of capitalism" while at the same time making "as much money as possible" out of capitalists. The book was rejected by the publisher Victor Gollancz, after which Crawford decided not to approach other publishers, instead giving typed copies of the work to his friends. Although he became involved with the Friends of the Soviet Union and wrote several articles for the Daily Worker newspaper, he never joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, nor did he become involved in organised politics at all, perhaps fearing that to do so would jeopardise his employment in the civil service.

In Britain, he photographed sites associated with the prominent Marxists Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. He also photographed the signs erected by landowners and religious groups, believing that in doing so he was documenting the traces of capitalist society before they would be swept away by socialism. Both in Britain and on a visit to Germany he photographed pro-fascist and anti-fascist propaganda and graffiti. Like many leftists at the time, he believed that fascism was a temporary, extreme expression of capitalist society that would soon be overcome by socialism. He nevertheless expressed admiration for the German archaeological establishment under the Nazi government, highlighting that the British state lagged far behind in terms of funding excavations and encouraging the study of archaeology in universities; he refrained from commenting on the political agenda that the Nazis had in promoting archaeology.

Despite his socialist and pro-Soviet beliefs, Crawford believed in collaborating with all foreign archaeologists, regardless of political or ideological differences. In early 1938, he lectured on aerial archaeology at the German Air Ministry; the Ministry published his lecture as Luftbild und Vorgeschichte, and Crawford was frustrated that the British government did not publish his work with the same enthusiasm. From there, he visited Vienna to meet with his friend, the archaeologist Oswald Menghin; Menghin took Crawford to an event celebrating the Anschluss, at which he met the prominent Nazi Josef Bürckel. Shortly after, he holidayed in Schleswig-Holstein, where German archaeologists took him to see the Danevirke.

In 1939, Crawford was involved in photographing the excavation of the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon ship burial in Suffolk. He was present on the site from 24 to 29 July 1939, and took 124 photographs. Several of his photographs are used in the British Museum's display of Sutton Hoo artefacts, but he was not originally credited; this may may be due to the lack of recognition for certain types of archaeological labour, such as photography. His photographs recorded the excavation process as well artefacts recovered during the dig, such as the Anastasius Dish. A photographic record of an archaeological excavation was novel at the time.

In the late 1930s he began work on a book titled Bloody Old Britain, which he described as "an attempt to apply archaeological methods to the study of contemporary society" and in which he was heavily critical of his homeland. It examined 1930s Britain through its material culture, with Crawford reaching the judgement that it was a society in which appearances were given greater importance than value, with clothing, for instance, emphasising bourgeois respectability over comfort. He attributed much of this to the impact of capitalism and consumerism on British culture. The work fitted within an established genre of 1930s publications which lamented the state of British society, in particular the quality of its food and manufactured products as well as its increasing suburbanisation. By the outbreak of the Second World War the work had become less marketable due to its unpatriotic nature, and when in 1943 Crawford proposed it to Methuen Publishing they turned it down; he gave copies to a few friends, but never published it.

### Second World War

In anticipation of the Second World War, Crawford expressed the view that he would "remain neutral" and not take sides, not because he favoured fascism over liberal democracy but because he saw both as repugnant forms of capitalist society which would ultimately be swept away by a socialist revolution; in his words the war would be "a clash of imperialisms, a gangsters' feud". After war broke out, he decided that in the event of a German invasion of Britain he would destroy all of his leftist literature lest he be persecuted for possessing it.

In November 1940, the German Luftwaffe began bombing Southampton, where the OS offices were located. Crawford removed some of the old OS maps and stored them in the garage of his house at Nursling, while also unsuccessfully urging the Director-General to remove the OS' archive of books, documents, maps and photographs to a secure location. Subsequently, the OS headquarters were destroyed in the bombing, resulting in the loss of most of their archive. The refusal of the OS administration to take his warnings seriously infuriated Crawford, exacerbating his anger about the civil service's red tape and bureaucracy. In his words, "trying to get a move on in the Civil Service was like trying to swim in a lake of glue". Resigning his membership in various British societies, he unsuccessfully tried to find employment abroad.

With little for an archaeology officer to do at the OS in wartime, in mid-1941 Crawford was seconded to the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England "for special duties during wartime". They assigned him to carry out a project of photographic documentation in Southampton for the National Buildings Record, producing images of many old buildings or architectural features that were threatened by the Luftwaffe's bombing campaign. He appreciated the value of this work, taking 5,000 photographs over the course of the war. In 1944, the Council for British Archaeology was founded, and while Crawford was invited to serve on its first council, he declined the offer, being lukewarm about the project.

## Later life: 1946–1957

In 1946, at the earliest possible opportunity, Crawford resigned his post at the OS, where he was replaced by Charles Philips. He remained in the Southampton area and retained his interest in the city's architecture, in particular that of the Middle Ages. In 1946 he was a founding member of a lobby group, Friends of Old Southampton, which sought to protect the city's historic architecture from destruction amid post-war development. During the post-war period he also came to be preoccupied and terrified by the prospect of a nuclear war, urging archaeological authorities to make copies of all their information and disperse it in different locations to ensure that knowledge survived any forthcoming Third World War. Retaining his left-wing interests, in 1945 and 1946 he had some involvement with the Labour Party, although elsewhere he mocked the "ignorant" who thought that Labour "genuinely" represented socialism. In the latter part of the 1940s he became increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet Union after reading Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, a book about Joseph Stalin's Great Purge and Moscow show trials, as well as learning of how Soviet scientists who did not support the ideas of Trofim Lysenko had been persecuted. In 1950—after reading the memoir of Margarete Buber-Neumann—he declared himself to be "fanatically anti-Soviet [and] anti-communist".

In 1949, Crawford was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 1950 he became a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. In 1952 he was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Cambridge for his contributions to aerial archaeology.

Crawford returned his attention to Sudanese archaeology, describing Sudan as "an escape-land of the mind at a time when the island of Britain was an austere prison". At the invitation of the Sudanese government, he visited the country on an archaeological reconnaissance trip in January 1950, before visiting the Middle Nile in 1951. At Nursling, he wrote a book on the northern Sudanese Funj Sultanate of Sennar, which appeared in the same year as his long-delayed report on the Abu Geili excavation, co-written with Frank Addison. He followed this with the 1953 book Castles and Churches in the Middle Nile Region. Another of Crawford's book projects in this period was a short history of Nursling, as well as an introductory guide to landscape studies, Archaeology in the Field, published in 1953. In 1955 he published his autobiography, Said and Done, which the archaeologist Glyn Daniel and the historian Mark Pottle—the authors of Crawford's entry in the Dictionary of National Biography—described as "a vivacious and amusing autobiography in which his character comes clearly through".

After the discovery of prehistoric rock art on Stonehenge in 1953, Crawford decided to examine the engravings on the megalithic monuments in Brittany. Inspired by this subject, in 1957 he published The Eye Goddess. In this book he argued that many of the abstract designs featured in prehistoric rock art were representations of eyes. He further argued that they provided evidence for a religion devoted to a mother goddess which had existed across the Old World from the Palaeolithic through to the period of Christianisation. That same decade also witnessed similar ideas regarding a Neolithic religion focused around a great goddess being espoused in the works of Childe and Daniel; the historian Ronald Hutton later observed that "whether or not there was ever an 'Age of the Goddess' in Neolithic Europe, there certainly was one among European intellectuals in the mid twentieth century". Crawford's book was not well received within academia.

Crawford was also interested in cats, and learned how to mimic cat noises, performing these on a BBC broadcast, "The Language of Cats", which proved popular and led to a range of fan letters. A publisher in the United States invited him to write a book on the subject, but Crawford never completed it. In the mid-1950s, Crawford began to take an interest in astronomy and cosmological ideas about the origin of the universe, favouring Fred Hoyle's steady state theory about an eternal universe with no beginning or end.

In 1951, an edited volume, Aspects of Archaeology in Britain and Beyond: Essays Presented to O. G. S. Crawford, was published, having been edited by Grimes and brought out to mark Crawford's 65th birthday. Reviewing the anthology for Antiquity, J. v. d. Waals and R. J. Forbes described it as "an exquisite birthday present". Many of Crawford's associates worried about him, aware that he lived alone at his cottage in Nursling—with only the company of his elderly housekeeper and cats—and that he lacked either a car or telephone. It was there that he died in his sleep on the night of 28–29 November 1957. He had arranged for some of his letters and books to be destroyed, while others were to be sent to the Bodleian Library, with the proviso that some of them would not be opened until the year 2000. His body was buried in the church graveyard at Nursling. In accordance with his instructions, the title "Editor of Antiquity" was inscribed on his gravestone, reflecting his desire to be remembered primarily as an archaeologist. On Crawford's death, the editorship of Antiquity was taken on by Daniel.

## Personality

Crawford's socialist beliefs were known to his colleagues and associates, as was his antipathy toward religion. While he became an atheist during his time at Marlborough College, it is not known exactly when he embraced socialism. He placed a strong emphasis on personal self-sufficiency, and openly expressed contempt for those who required social interaction for their own happiness. His adult life was a solitary one, with no family and no human dependents. His sexual orientation remains unknown, with Bowden noting that Crawford's interactions with women were "cordial but not significant". He was fond of cats, and kept several as pets, also rearing pigs for food as well as growing vegetables in his garden at Nursing. A heavy smoker, he was known for rolling his own cigarettes.

Crawford was often irritable and some colleagues found him exasperating to work with. He was known for his lack of patience, and when angry or frustrated was known to fling his hat to the floor in a gesture of rage. His biographer Kitty Hauser noted that "apparently trifling events left an indelible mark on him", for he would remember a perceived slight for decades. Bowden expressed the view that while Crawford "had a quick temper, which he strove to control ... he was essentially a friendly man", adding that he could be "clubbable, hospitable and kind".

Jonathan Glancey referred to Crawford as "a compelling if decidedly cantankerous anti-hero" and an "essentially Victorian eccentric". Hauser characterised him as "a very British combination of a snob and a rebel", also noting that he was "no great intellectual". Similarly, Clark expressed the view that "Crawford's achievements" stemmed from his "moral integrity and singleness of mind" rather than "any outstanding intellectual brilliance". The journalist Neal Ascherson described Crawford as "not conventionally intellectual". Ascherson added that Crawford was "withdrawn, generally ill at ease with other members of the human species except on paper, and suspicious of personal celebrity", in this way contrasting Crawford with his "gregarious" contemporaries Wheeler and Daniel.

Daniel characterised Crawford as having a "messianic desire" to promote archaeology "to the people of the world". He was opinionated and dogmatic and expressed disdain for those who viewed the past in a different manner to himself. Piggott noted that Crawford was unable to sympathise with the perspectives of those studying past societies through a discipline other than archaeology, such as history or art history, and that he could not sympathise with "anyone not as passionately concerned as himself in field antiquities". For example, in one of his publications, Crawford dismissed historians as being "bookish" and "clean-booted". The archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes commented that in Crawford's editorials for Antiquity, he directed "righteous indignation" toward "everybody from the State, Dominion and Colonial Governments, Universities and Museums, to tardy reviewers and careless proof-correctors".

Wheeler—who considered Crawford to be "one of [his] closest friends"—claimed that the latter was "an outspoken and uncompromising opponent" and a man who had a "boyish glee in calling the bluff of convention". He added that Crawford exhibited the "divine impatience of the pioneer" and that he had an "inability to work in harness. If he joined a committee or a sodality, he did so only to resign at the first opportunity." Piggott described Crawford as a mentor who "was encouraging, helpful, and unconventional: his racy outspoken criticism of what then passed for the archaeological Establishment was music to a schoolboy's ear".

## Reception and legacy

Crawford was much respected by his peers. According to Hauser, at the time of his death Crawford had "acquired an almost mythical status among British archaeologists as the uncompromising – if eccentric – progenitor of them all". In 1999, the archaeologist John Charlton referred to Crawford as "one of the pioneers of British archaeology this century", while nine years later Ascherson described him as "beyond question one of the great figures of the 'modern' generation which transformed British archaeological practice and its institutions between 1918 and – say – 1955". Ascherson noted that Crawford's contributions to archaeology had little to do with archaeological theory and more to do with "the institutions and tools ... which he bequeathed to his profession", including Antiquity. Crawford devoted little time to interpreting the archaeological record, and when he did so usually embraced functionalist interpretations, believing that people in traditional societies devoted almost all of their time to survival rather than behaving according to religious or symbolic concepts; in this he was typical of his time and was influenced by Marxist materialism.

Crawford was recognised for his contributions to bringing archaeology to a wide sector of the British public. The archaeologist Caroline Malone stated that many viewed Crawford as "an 'amateur's' archaeologist, providing the means to publish and comment outside the restrictions of local journals and to offer a vision of a new and universal discipline". Clark expressed the view that Crawford "always hankered to restore the flesh and blood and to make the past a reality to the living generation", and in doing so helped to attract a greater public audience for British archaeology than many of his colleagues. Wheeler remarked that "he was our greatest archaeological publicist; he taught the world about scholarship, and scholars about one another". Commenting on Crawford's editorship of Antiquity, Hawkes expressed the view that his "skill in steering between over-simplification and over-specialization has enabled the Magazine to succeed admirably in its role as go-between for experts and public".

Crawford's system of documenting archaeological sites in the OS' Archaeological Record provided the blueprint on which both the later National Archaeological Records in England, Scotland, and Wales, and the local sites and monuments records were based. In the 21st century, Crawford's photographic archive stored at Oxford University's Institute of Archaeology was still consulted by archaeologists seeking to view how various sites appeared during the first half of the 20th century. In 2008, Kitty Hauser's biography, Bloody Old Britain, was published. Reviewing her work for The Guardian, Glancey described it as "a truly fascinating and unexpected book". Writing in Public Archaeology, Ascherson characterised it as "full of clever perception and sympathetic insight" but was critical of its lack of references and "occasional mistakes of fact".

British archaeologist (1886–1957)

World War I prisoners of war held by Germany