David Rohl continues his quest to reach the historical kernel lying at the heart of some of the greatest unsolved problems and mysteries of Old World history and archaeology. He reveals what really happened in seven famous myths and legends bequeathed to us by the ancients and shows us that the passage of time has not wiped away all the evidence, and it is possible to reach the reality behind the legends. LEGEND reveals the historical truth which lies at the heart of the Book of Genesis: * The Garden of Eden is finally found * Heroes from the Book of Genesis are indentified in ancient records * The true site of Noah's Ark is located in Kurdistan * Paradise is discovered on a desert island in the Persian Gulf * The mysterious origins of the first pharaohs are revealed

By employing the same basic methodologies used to establish the currently accepted chronology, it has been possible for a group of young archaeologists, including David Rohl, to create a New Chronology which resolves many of the problems permeating ancient world studies. In particular, one model has been developed which has major implications for Old Testament research. Through the revision of the master chronology of ancient Egypt they have unlocked the key to biblical history - the epic events of the Bible really did happen as recorded in the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles - the problem was that we had previously been looking for them in completely the wrong place in time.

Many of the conundrums of the past are explained, and legendary figures such as Joseph, Moses, David and Solomon find their true political setting. Exodus and Conquest will be restored to history and the magic of legend will begin to make its great comeback.

The Lords of Avaris is one man's journey in search of the legendary origins of the Western World. Our story begins in a small rock-cut tomb below the desolate ruin-mound of Jericho in the Jordan Valley. This is the start of an epic journey of discovery, in the Homeric mould, which ranges across the ancient lands and archaeological sites of the Mediterranean. From Joshua's Jericho to Romulus' Rome, the true chronicle of our pre-Christian past is uncovered revealing an extraordinary historical picture, previously unimagined by scholars. The epic legends of the West, which permeate the writings of Greece and Rome, appear to have been based on the exploits of genuine historical figures and actual events. There really was an 'Heroic Age' of brazen-clad warriors, the last of which fought before the walls of Troy, just as described in Homer's Iliad. At the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age - two thousand years before the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Roman Senate - a new people appeared on the stage of history to join the great civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. These 'Indo-European'-speaking tribes were chariot-riding warriors from the northern mountains and plains. They became the Hittites, the Aryan kings of Mitanni, the Vedic heroes of the Indus, and the founders of the later empires of Greece, Persia and Rome. They had many legendary names - the Divine Pelasgians of Greece, the Luwians of Troy and western Anatolia, the Rephaim and Anakim of the Bible, and the Hyksos rulers of Avaris who suppressed Egypt for generations. Their heroes and heroines are legionary: Inachus, mythical king of Argos in the Peloponnese; his daughter the beautiful Princess Io who married an Egyptian pharaoh; Danaus, the Hyksos ruler who, fleeing from Egypt to Greece, founded the Mycenaean dynasty which culminated in Agamemnon's ill-fated Trojan War; Cadmus, the bringer of writing to the West; Minos, the Cretan high-king of Knossos who built the infamous Labyrinth; Mopsus, warrior and sage who led a vast Greek, Philistine and Anatolian army into the Levant in a daring attempt to seize Egypt in the time of Ramesses III. All these, and more, are the stuff of legend - but The Lords of Avaris reveals these Classical heroes as flesh-and-blood characters from our ancestral past.

As the leading figure in the New Archaeology, David Rohl has been at the forefront of the movement to discover the archaeological evidence for events described in the Old Testament which we have come to think of as myths. His previous books, The Test of Time and Legend presented the arguments and counter-arguments. In From Eden to Exile this discursive approach is replaced by historical story-telling, which follows the sequence of events from the rise of Neolithic civilisation in a region now part of Iran which inspired the story of the Garden of Eden, through Noah, Abraham and the sojourn in Egypt, to the fall of Jericho, the dual kingdoms of the Promised Land and lastly, the exile in Babylon, where the stories of the Old Testament were collated into something very like their present form.