A friendly introduction to the complexities of the Archiac period in Greece, Egypt, the kingdoms of Isreal and Judah, and the successive empires of Assyria and Babylonia, set within a "first person narrative" fleshed out with plausible personal details of one lifetime--the life of a Greek mercenary"borrowed" from a well-known inscription at Abu Simbel in Lower Nubia. The reader is prefectly free to treat this book as a "historical novel" simply by reading the text and ignoring the endnotes and other editorial material.