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Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King
Edited by Michael D. Coogan, J. Cheryl Exum and Lawrence E. Stager
(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press), 428 pp., $25.00
A festschrift in honor of Philip J. King’s 70th birthday, this collection of 24 original essays brings together material by leading archaeologists and Biblical scholars who have done fieldwork. In recent years, King has concentrated on synthesizing the results of archaeological investigations with the technical studies of Biblical scholars. He has, the editors write, “demonstrated how archaeological data can … illuminate the Bible, and … how that anthology of the writings of ancient Israel and early Judaism and Christianity is … an artifact that can be understood only in the light of its context.” The contributors were asked to follow King’s lead and concentrate on “integrating the results of excavation and the conclusions of exegesis.” The authors include many familiar to BAR readers: Avraham Biran, Dan P. Cole, Frank Moore Cross, William G. Dever, Israel Finkelstein, David Noel Freedman, Carol and Eric Meyers, Alan Millard, Anson F. Rainey, Ephraim Stern and David Ussishkin, among others.
Chronicle of the Pharaohs: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers and Dynasties of Ancient Egypt
Peter A. Clayton
(New York: Thames & Hudson), 224 pp., $29.95
Ever wonder who came first, Tutankhamun or Ramesses the Great? Or who built the pyramids? This one-volume reference book, replete with 350 illustrations (130 in color), timelines, charts, cartouches (royal names in hieroglyphics) for each king and queen, genealogies, mummies and important events, portraits and diagrams of royal tombs and monuments, has all the answers. Clayton, an Egyptologist, archaeologist and numismatist, enlivens more than 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian history through biographical accounts of the 170 known pharaohs. Highlights of their exploits and personalities and features on everything from the eight wives of Ramesses the Great to the pharaohs of the Exodus to Cleopatra make this an entertaining overview of an extraordinarily diverse ancient civilization.
Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bible and Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King
