This volume presents a study of the beginnings of biblical archeology examines its historical background and the cultural conditions which influenced its development. The author knits together this period's events and trends, starting with Napoleon's campaign in the Middle East, to which he attached French scholars, and ending with the British conquest of Ottoman Palestine in 1917. He reports on the political in-fighting and covert plotting between rival nations and the individual battles between opposing scholars that led to many of archeology's greatest discoveries.