This volume presents a vast number of monuments and documents from almost all levels of Egyptian society during the long reign of Ramesses II. They range across social categories from grand viziers, viceroys of Nubia, chiefs of treasury and granaries, high priests and leading clerics of Egypt's principal gods, army generals and elite corps, through the high, middle and lower ranks of Egyptian society to the workmen who cut the royal tombs.

While many monuments are formal, even outwardly banal, they contain a mass of data on family geneaologies enabling us to trace the careers of many people. Some of these documents give unrivalled glimpses into the social and official life of early Ramesside Egypt; the Deir el-Medina material sheds much light on the organisation from construction of the royal tombs in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens. In all sections, a great many of these monuments and documents appear in English for the first time (for some, the first appearance in any modern language).

This volume, like its predecessors, gives a wide public full access to a vast range of inscriptions previously only intelligible to a few specialists.

For more than two hundred years controversy has raged over the reliability of the Old Testament. Questions about the factuality of its colorful stories of heroes, villains, and kings, for example, have led many critics to see the entire Hebrew Bible as little more than pious fiction. In this fascinating new book, noted ancient historian K. A. Kitchen takes strong issue with today's "revisionist" critics and offers a firm foundation for the historicity of the biblical texts.

In a detailed, comprehensive, and entertaining manner, Kitchen draws on an unprecedented range of historical data from the ancient Near East -- the Bible's own world -- and uses it to soundly reassess both the biblical record and the critics who condemn it. Working back from the latest periods (for which hard evidence is readily available) to the remotest times, Kitchen systematically shows up the many failures of favored arguments against the Bible and marshals pertinent permanent evidence from antiquity's inscriptions and artifacts to demonstrate the basic honesty of the Old Testament writers.

Enhanced with numerous tables, figures, and maps, "On the Reliability of the Old Testament" is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of biblical truth.

This volume provides an entirely fresh, comprehensive treatment of the Battle of Qadesh and all the other wars and campaigns of Ramesses II. It develops the reader's understanding of both events and records and is enhanced by a full set of new maps of campaigns.

The author provides new analyses of the relations between the Egyptian and Hittite empires, incorporating the cuneiform evidence. He reviews the monumental remains of the great Delta cities with the use of "virtual maps," and assigns them to particular temples. The volume also reassesses the king's works throughout Nubia, closely defines the careers of various members of his royal family and reveals the significance of many lesser sites and remains for the first time.

This volume is the indispensable companion to the "Ramesside Inscriptions Translations, Volume II." Used together, the two volumes provide an essential source for the study of the reign of Egypt's most spectacular pharaoh.