First the good news: This book's production values are high, its photos are interesting and its text offers some interesting commentary on many obscure political entities which non-specialists rarely encounter in popular surveys of Levantine archaeology... Alas, something very odd is also afoot here: There is virtually no mention of the ancient - and obviously pivotal - kingdoms of Israel, Judea and Samaria... or the fascinating presence of Jewish communities in the late Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods which followed. This is like writing a survey of Mesoamerica up through the first centuries following the Spanish conquest - and willfully ignoring the very existence of, say, the Olmec. It produces a totally fractured and falsified pseudo-historical impression in the minds of unsophisticated readers, and it throws the entire work onto the heap of propaganda, rather than admitting it into the library of Science. The authors' affiliations with several so-called "universities" in Egypt and Lebanon suggests the reason why modern conflicts and the continuing Arab rejection of their Israeli neighbor seem to have trickled down into the historical realm, but such falsification is still disreputable and unworthy of either the authors or the EU publisher. Shame! Shame!

This book is one of the great additions to the Levant section in any scholarly library. It is well researched and very well illustrated. This reviewer is impressed by the rigour and the excellence of the research that went into this work. Especially commendable is the total absence of any and all the Biblical mythology that seems to permeate more vulgar works that appeal to the pseudo-literate.