The spirit of a people dwells in a marble youth who symbolizes the citizens of the Greco-Roman city of Aphrodisias. After 20 years of excavation, the ancient settlement in Turkey continues to yield astonishing works by sculptors who gave stone the power to evoke a way of life and a time long vanished. National Geographic, October 1981

“Bodhisattvas are ten times more beautiful than devas, who are ten times more beautiful than humans,” reads the Sukhavativyuha. Artists followed that sacred text as they painted bodhisattvas, or Buddhas-to-be. Followers believe tht Maitreya, with vase in hand, will become a Buddha 25,000 years after the death of Gautama. National Geographic, April 1996

The flair far detail and subtle handling of marble texture emerges powerfully in a close-up of a figure from the late first or early second century A.D., National Geographic, October 1981

Warren Morgan, Weapons of Ancient Americans, National Geographic, October 1988

Veiled to uncover her beauty, the head of a second-century A.D. Aphrodite soaks in water to loosen encrustations and to leach damaging impurities that have penetrated the marble

A gentle nativity may depict Aphrodite in a rare pose cradling her son, the winged god of love, Eros. An unknown face looks on from behind a figure that could be Hermes, one of the goddess’s many lovers. National Geographic, October 1981

Roman copy of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, unearthed near the ruins of Sinuessa, National Geographic, June 1981

A fisherman’s dog dug up a thousand-year-old corpse near Camarones Cove, National Geographic, March 1995