During the early decades of this century a handful of foreign explorers raced to remove wall-paintings, sculptures, manuscripts and other treasures from the lost cities of the Silk Road, the great trans-Asian highway that had once linked imperial China and distant Rome. The German archaeologist, Albert von Le Coq–one of the most successful of these explorers–discovered the huge, ninth-century Buddhist murals from the cliff-face monastery at Bezeklik. Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan, first published in 1928, is von Le Coq’s account of the adventures and misadventures that beset him during his excavatios along the Silk Road. This edition includes an introduction by Peter Hopkirk, author of Foreign Devils on the Silk Road and Trespassers o the Roof of the World.